Steven R. Lundin

All first novels are flawed. In fact, almost all anythings are flawed. It's not a reason to avoid a book, its being a first, or even because it's self-published (as this one is). Good stories come to writers, the writers write them, that's how this gig works.

Lundin tells a story of World War Two that I haven't heard before. It's not like other stories I've encountered from the Greatest Generation's hagiographers' pens and it's not like the stories they told themselves. It's a real, human, show more interesting story about cruel and vengeful and vain people manipulating those under them, using them as pawns in a power trip...on a golf course. The most ridiculous conceivable game used to even scores and count coup between the Army and the Navy during a cataclysmic war! I was almost more outraged by this than by any other thing that happened in the book!

This is, by the bye, a novel based on a true story, according to the author. I'd love to know how he knows that.

Oh well, on with the opining. I think Mr. Lundin is onto a gold mine here. It's a terrific tale of love, jealousy, obsession, and murder. It's got the requisite Beauty Wronged, the Beast Unmasked, and the Innocent Sacrifice. It's got the sins against the fathers being avenged. It's got a chilling little cast of pawns, and only one puppeteer: Fate. That's why the three star rating.

Now. The writing. Serviceable. Just about adequate to the task of conveying the information the author needs you to know. RIFE with missed opportunities! LOUSY with ungrasped brass rings! SEETHING with passionate, gorgeous scenes handled in 2-3 terse sentences (seventeen instances in the first eleven chapters, then I got discouraged and quit counting)!

I don't know Mr. Lundin. I don't have any idea if this book is the fruit of many years' thought, revision, agonized contemplation, or if it simply fell out of him one day and he set about making it into a readable text (which it is). But if I met Mr. Lundin, and he asked me what he could do to make his next novel better, I'd tell him to hie himself hence to a writing workshop containing the maximum possible number of nasty, bitter failures, and taught by a thriller writer. He needs to know two things that really only become clear in that world: 1) he possesses something that can't be taught or bought, a storyteller's eye; and 2) he needs something that can be taught and bought, a dramatist's craft of construction.

Characters that do more than advance the plot. Descriptions that do more than set us mise en scene. Dialogue that reads like freshly thought up emotional confusion! This story, my god, this is a GIFT! It's delectable! And it's told, not lived, not wrenched from a cold and uncaring cosmos.

And I still gave it three stars. I'm a tough room. I think this is head and shoulders above much of the storytelling I see coming from Major Publishers, told in such a flat way that the editors couldn't see the lurking success in the book. And the hell of it is, I don't think any of y'all will see it either because you won't buy the book.

I wish some of you would. Mike, Sgt Big G, please--take a chance, this is a story MADE for you! usnmm, you'll appreciate so much about this book, please try it! cameling my beloved friend, you see so much more deeply than most, and feel so keenly the pleasure of justice deferred...just give it a shot!

Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, Mr. Lundin, so please...think about my suggestion above...I *want* you to succeed, and this effort, while praiseworthy, is not likely to bring you the success I can plainly see you can expect. show less

This book was a weird one for me. I liked the plot, and the characters, but something didn't mesh right for me. I did like the book, but there was just something a little off about it, at least for me.

The story, on it's surface is about a golf game. The true heart of the story is a touching romance. All the characters were believable and I had great images in my head of them as I read. I could see the things that were going on and I could relate to the stirring romance as it blossomed. show more However there was a disconnect for me that I just couldn't quite pinpoint.

I didn't get really attached to the story, even though I was able to create the "world of the book" in my mind. Even a few weeks after I've finished this one I'm not quite able to pinpoint exactly where the disconnect is. The opening of the book is intriguing, the characters were believable, the details were done well, and the writing style was easy to read. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mindset to read this one when I did.

I think it has all the elements of a really great story, and that it was executed very well, which is why I question why I didn't get into it more. I would recommend this to anyone who likes romantic stories (not necessarily romance novels...) I think in the future I will have to read this one again, at a time when I think my mindset is right. show less

I thought this was an excellent read. I did not want to put it down. It is a story that shows how jealousy can affect people, not just the ones that are jealous. It is a story of love, jealousy, death, war and golf.