Review: Sluggish
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 20, 2011
This book confused me. It's called a "Detective Shakespeare" mystery, but he doesn't make his first appearance until 40% through the book and even then, he's not close to being a central character. Even by the end of the book, you don't really know anything of substance about him.  The only character I came to like at all was the TV reporter, but I got the feeling that she had originally been designed to be a supplemental character that somehow grew into something more as the author progressed writing the book. For the first two-thirds of the book, it felt like the same two "action" sequences were being retold using slightly different words and situations. A woman gets kidnapped, she's put in a hole. Or the mystery killer finds a victim and kills him. There was no real context around the actions, they just seemed to be happening in a vacuum. I guess that all in all, it just took too long for it to get going for me. I will say that the ending (maybe the last 15% of the book) was really terrific and it moved my rating from 1 or 2 stars to 3. But even with the uptick at the end, it was still just OK for me.