The Mystery Starts Here

This could have been a much better book but…it’s simply not well written. The beginning was interesting – a man takes the train to New York City instead of driving as usual and…the train is blown up by terrorists. Wrong place – wrong time. He’s killed – or is he? Charles Friedman is a hedge fund manager who’s been doing things he shouldn’t. What has he done? Well, it was never really clear to me. The plot of “The Dark Tide” was hard to follow and pretty silly. Although Andrew Gross has published several books with James Patterson and a couple on his own – he’s not a good writer. “The Dark Tide” is 413 pages long and would have been much better shorter and with good editing. Long boring chunks needed to be removed and…Please Mr. Gross, learn to write dialogue!

For one thing, Karen Freidman, calls her husband Charlie half the time and Charles the other half. Make up your mind! One name, PLEASE. She was a whinny foul- mouthed woman who didn’t seem to have any friends – and I can see why! She swore more than any of the bad guys in the book and no, it was not very appealing. She’s supposed to be a well-to-do Jewish woman with two nearly adult kids – yuck! I don’t know any men who swear as much as this character did – and I’m not sure why Gross had her so foul-mouthed.

And, as I said, Gross needs to learn how to write dialogue. He had long passages of two people talking where they constantly used names! As in:

“George, tell me it isn’t true!”

“Sorry, Peter, it is.”

“No, George that can’t be right. Why, George just yesterday you told me…”

Well, that’s a silly example but…just the kind of thing I found in Gross’s book. It got so annoying I almost didn’t finish the book. I have students in my beginning Creative Writing Class who write better dialoge that that. Another bad thing he does is USE ITALICS  to show fear, exitment or danger – words should have been sufficient if he’d used the right ones. Lots of exclamations points – another sign of a beginning writer – but Gross isn’t – is he? The book was rife with cliches too – her blood ran cold, the hairs stood up on the back of his neck  – please! 

So, all in all I did finish the book but only by skimming the last third. I’ve never read a book by Gross – even one he’s co-written with Patterson and I certainly won’t bother again.

I pick up Lisa Scottoliine’s latest book, “Look Again” because it was a stand-alone and NOT a lawyer-courtroom mystery. I got sort of burned out on those a long time ago. Too much Grisham?

The premise was interesting. Ellen Gleeson, a reporter and single mother of an adopted boy, sees one of those “Have you seen this child” post cards and is immediately shocked to see how much the missing kid looks like her own son. Most people would shrug and thow the damn thing out. Not Ellen. She almost goes out of her way to prove her son is the missing kid! She did a story on him while he was in the hospital, very sick, and gettting heart surgery. You’d think she’d got out of her way to protect him and keep him safe. Nope. She neglects her job, puts herself and her child in danger as she runs all over town looking for clues. Why? Because it was the right thing to do! Hmmmmm.

I read this book in a day and it was … just okay. Ellen professes such love for her son, but … he has a full time babysitter and sends him to pre-school. This is parenting? I didn’t believe most of the characters – they were pretty stock. And, it obvious right off the bat what’s going to happen. The ending felt very rushed and was beyond sappy. I found myself skipping a lot toward the end of the book.

I did have a major problem with the character of Ellen. She’s supposed to be a feature writer for a major Philadelphia newspapers – but, she owns a home in a nice neighborhood, she paid over $40,000 for a private adoption, she paid off the kids hospital bills, she has him in pre-school and has a full time baby sitter. Where on EARTH did she get all that money! Hey, I’ve worked for newspapers – they do not pay big bucks, believe me. That part didn’t make sense.

Also, when people involved with the adoption of her son keep dying – it never occurs to this investigative reporter that the the deaths may be murders. The whole plot was very easy to figure out – the clues short of jumped off the page and screamed at me, but if you like mommy-kid books this one wasn’t terrible. I just hope Scottoline writes better lawyer-mystery books. I’ll try one and let you know.

Pick up a copy of my latest book Call Sign: Love, a romance,  now available at www.writewordsinc.com