By
Judith
Kelman
This is the worst novel I have read in recent memory.
The advertisement for it made it sound quite thrilling in a basic crime-forensics-thriller
way. I usually appreciate the occasional genre-type of throwaway novel,
if done well (for example, Grisham's books are standard law-genre, but
very good nonetheless.) But this was a travesty of a book.
The characters were fake - so, so fake. They didn't
act in logical ways - especially the main character. She was so unlikable.
You could not intentionally make a greater number of bad decisions. I
was upset she wasn't murdered at the end. Also, Jesse thought that alternating
chapters between first-person and third person was very jarring. So did
I, since the chapters were very short. The dialogue was horribly cliché.
Here, let's open to a random page:
"A person doesn't take off in the middle of a job," bellowed
the voice. "I'll see to it everyone knows, Jake. Mark my words. If
you leave now, you're through. No one will hire you. No one, you hear?
Don't you dare come crawling back to me, you little putz."
"Mark my words?" Huh? I'd have to spend four years
in banality school for that phrase to even occur to me. Here's a fun
game - try to count the clichés in that one paragraph. I got a
6. The Celestine Prophecy was less hackneyed than this book.
The forensics stuff in here was trite and expected,
and not in-depth enough to seem real, or substantial enough to hold the
novel together. The book really centered on the characters, and I've
already mentioned how bad they were. The author's voice was so inauthentic
that I began doubting every piece of information she provided. I felt
justified for this later on, when some graphic design "facts" were briefly
mentioned, in a horribly incorrect way. I can only imagine how forensic
scientists would feel reading this. I get better forensics details reading
1970s' Flash comics … and better plots.
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