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Alex R. Carver

Author of Where There's a Will

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While I did enjoy some aspects of this novel, I think it needed a tighter focus and better chapter structuring. There was a lot going on, and, since the author uses an omniscient narrative style, a lot of characters to keep track of.

First off, the good. When an action scene comes along, it's a page turner, with the brawls, chases, and injuries the characters receive being well described. The characters don't magically heal up after a few pages, either, as in some novels and movies. Also, I liked how none of the characters are super-cops; they're sometimes outmatched, and need superior numbers to corral a suspect. You won't see any unbeatable karate moves or impossible feats of marksmanship in this book.

This novel is also decidedly not hard-boiled. The officers are conscientious and kind-hearted, and go about their business with what seems to be a very British efficiency – at least, that's how I see it, being an American myself. You're not going to find much cynicism or bending of rules here – not by the good guys, that is.

The main plot revolves around the kidnapping of a schoolgirl from a wealthy family. This would be important enough by itself, but Nathan Stone, our overworked protagonist, has to deal with several other crimes during the course of the story – and this works against the novel. In general, I prefer the “one major case per novel” style of detective fiction, rather than a series of cases, even if they are interconnected.

One of the pluses of this approach is that the author can then spend time on character development, rather than having his characters run from one crime scene and interview to another – and the characters in this novel do need development. What do they do outside of work? What are their hopes, dreams, fears? We don't really know. Stone has one scene with a family member, and he's working the rest of the time. I actually sympathized more with the Keating family and the kidnappers, instead of the policemen, since we learn more about them, while the officers remain – well, officers.

There are also a lot of chapters in this novel, many of them short, and only serving to convey a minor piece of information to the reader. While I have no problem with an omniscient style, I do think Carver got too carried away here. I think a lot of these chapters could've been combined so they had greater narrative weight. Also, many of the chapters ended abruptly, leaving me confused, since it seemed like a crucial piece of information was about to be revealed.

I think with a lot of manuscript-polishing for subsequent books Carver could have a decent series. However, I can only give this novel three stars.
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roguehomebody | 1 other review | Nov 13, 2018 |
Not sure what the other reviewers read, but I can't say I enjoyed this. It was a struggle to get through. I was expecting a fast paced police drama about a kidnapping, but it takes forty pages before we even get to that. I didn’t get the connection between the A and the B stories, aside from giving the author the opportunity to build tension in one because they’d skipped back to the other and vice versa. I know they involved a couple of the same officers, but they read like two separate things. I found the book to be full of poor expression, cliché, inconsistencies, confusing speech, redundant tags, head hopping, scene jumping without a break, info dumping, and just really in need of an editor.

For instance:

There may be some spoilers below, so I’ve included some white space.







p 79-80: - repetition - we are told a man being interviewed can get a bit aggro. Three lines later we are told exactly the same thing.

p 92: - repetition - two girls say they think they know who committed a hit and run, a paragraph later the info is repeated.

p 94: - repetition - we have 'control his excitement', five lines later it is 'containing his excitement'.

p 192: - repetition - '...he was snapped out of his reverie by a noise that dragged his attention back to the here and now...' - this is the same thing twice.

p 124: - cliché - 'don't leave town'.

p 150: - cliché - a door is 'yanked open so he could disappear into the night'.

p 203: – OTT / cliché - fresh air hit him 'like a blow from a boxer'.

p 204: – OTT/ cliché - a constable 'leaped from his chair as though someone had set a bomb off under him'.

P 228: – OTT - yawn described as a ‘cavernous black hole’

p 132: - error with quote marks makes speech confusing.

P 141-143: - we have been told the room where the kidnapped girl is being kept has no handle on the inside. One of the guys enters the room and kicks the door shut behind him. The next thing he is at the top of the stairs listening to a phone convo. How did he get out?

p 149: - I've cut some of the descriptors and tags to concentrate on the speech:
"Where are you going?"
"Out."
"You're going out?"
And then a bit later on the same page:
"How the hell can you go out at a time like this?"(Disbelieving voice)
"What do you mean?"
"What do you mean, what do I mean? (Disbelieving tone increasing) How can you go out at time like this?"

p 152: - head hopping - We are in the detective's head thinking something wasn't fair. Next sentence we are in another character's head who has exactly the same thought.

p 155: - scene jumping - we are at the house where the kidnapped girl is. Next paragraph with no break we are in her parent's house.

p 165 & 218: incorrect use of ellipsis. Should be used to denote an omission of speech or something tapering off, but here it is used to indicate cut off speech. Should be an em-dash for cut off speech.

P 169: – clumsy expression – “Stop or I’ll be forced to use force!”

Various uses throughout of adverbs such as hugely, warningly etc.

The use of ‘past’ when the author means ‘passed’.

Fight scenes were not particularly clear, they were interspersed with lots of side information. Would have been more effective if written in short, sharp sentences that focussed on the action rather than including what the characters were thinking. Who has time to think during a fight? Something that probably took no more than a minute to happen felt like it was several minutes or more because of the extra writing.

Several things pop up out of nowhere – a detective suddenly having a telescopic baton that hasn’t been mentioned before (unless the reader is expected to know plain clothes can carry one). A crane we don’t know about stops the path of an escaping person. A person’s motorcycle leathers were thrown into the back of a van, then on the next page the jacket is back and is hiding a gun.

I was really disappointed with the endings to both the A and the B story in the book, they both kind of just fizzled out and solved themselves after trying to build up to a climax.

I’ve done a lot of editing of both fiction and non-fiction, so if the author wants to go through some things with me I’d be happy to have a word. At the moment I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone. If it was given a full edit and rewrite and the A and B stories were more relevant to each other then I might.

I love indie authors and should be one myself soon. It is a great community that somehow, despite the clamour for attention on Amazon, manages to stick together, so I hope this feedback helps the author out and they go on to write bigger and better things.
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KatiaMDavis | 1 other review | Dec 19, 2017 |

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Works
11
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Rating
2.8
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