Thursday, July 18, 2013

Book Review: Flee by J. A. Konrath and Ann Voss Petereson



Flee

Authors: J. A. Konrath and Ann Voss Peterson
Publisher: Thomas and Mercer
Date of Publication: October 10, 2012
Pages: 241 (Kindle Edition)

         To say that this book is awful does disservice to awful.  I rated it one star on Goodreads.com because that's the lowest rating a reader can give a book.  If I could have given it negative stars I would have.  This came as somewhat of a surprise since I have read several of J. A. Konrath's "Jack Daniels" series and enjoyed them.  They had a semblance of a plot and some character development as well as some humor, none of which shows up here.

     This book has a preposterous premise and the plot line is a giant chase scene through and around Chicago.  There are multiple clones of the main character (all of whom are female and named after male mystery writers: Chandler,  Hammett, Clancy, etc...).  There is violence galore and one explicit random sex scene.  What is missing is a plot, character development and humor.  Did I mention that the writing sounds like it came from a drop out from an on-line creative writing course?  Every page, it seems, has the main character noticing at least three smells ("Creative Writing 101: Have your characters use all of their senses").  The only real mystery here is why I read this whole book.  I guess that I somehow thought it would get better.  Maybe, like watching the TV news coverage of a natural disaster, you get sort of numb to how bad it is.  I don't know.  I've probably read worse books but I don't remember when.

No comments:

Post a Comment