I finished this novel by John Wessel a few days ago. I've had
it sitting on the shelf for a couple years now. It's set in
Chicago and centered around a private investigator without a
license, doing surveillance work for a firm based in
Schaumburg, a suburb about 20 miles from downtown Chicago. It
all went well for the first hundred pages, the characters,
the dialogue, and the plotting, but after that it went
downhill. The plot not only got overly complex, but it also
tied in to a past event in the detective's life in a thin and
unconvincing connection. When it ended, half the mysteries in
the book were left unexplained. Probably the high point was
the protagonist's self-deprecating humor. miker
>>
I posted my review of this book on my blog at http://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=154
.
A key phrase in my comments toward the end, which echoes
miker's opinion, is this one:
"The plot itself eventually becomes verbal sludge and next to
impossible to follow. "
Actually I think miker and I agree on just about everything,
and he takes a lot less wordage to say it in.
Best
Steve
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 07 May 2007 EDT