Leslie Glass

Hanging Time follows Burning Time in the April Woo series, and once again this is not a particularly good book. It's rare that I give up on a book, however this nearly made it to that exclusive club.

I'd even describe the first half as dull, it's not until the second murder and the conflicting evidence in the investigation comes that the story gets vaguely interesting. Not to the point of gripping mind you, just vaguely interesting where you somewhat question your original assumptions on who show more the real killer is, and yes despite the authors giant runway lights attempting to lead you in the direction of the easy open and shut answer, the true answer is right in front of you from virtually the beginning. Then just in case you didn't pick that up there's a trail of breadcrumbs throughout the entire novel that point to that answer also.

I also feel that if this book were published today a good segment of the outrage culture subscribers would be all over this as racist with it's frequent 'Asian talk' such as "rucky rife" et cetera because apparently we the readers cannot truly appreciate an Asian character without caricature dialogue.

In closing, if you're trapped on a island after a plane crash, been convicted and looking at a prison term, or will otherwise ensnared with no entertainment or distractions then this would be an option to pass time, but otherwise I'd recommend looking elsewhere for reading material. show less

Mildly interesting read, that I picked up for 99 cents. The most interesting parts are when the character Woo is talking about her Chinese heritage, and especially her domineering mother, known as Skinny Dragon. There is a whole series about April Woo, a NYPD detective, but I wasn't impressed enough with the story or the writing to pursue any more.

If I had to pick a word to describe this book, that word would be "okay".

It's not great, but it's not terrible either. It's just okay.

At times it's rather graphic and crude, at others it has character dialogue that seems straight out of someones fan fiction novel, yet it also has a pretty decent plot amongst that, and a reasonable story to tell.

The story is that of April Woo Chinese-American detective, and boy does the author spend a lot of time really drilling into you about how she's show more Chinese-American, to the detriment of the story's momentum I thought. Anyway, it's the story of April Woo, detective investigating a mission persons case which dovetails with the case of an actress, who recently starred in a sexually graphic art film, receiving creepy letters that have her psychologist husband rather concerned. There's also a rather unstable man who likes to torture and burn women.

For all the descriptive nature within the novel, unfortunately the ending felt rather brisk. I have the full set of the nine books in this series however at this point I'm not sure whether they'll be staying or going out the window, this wasn't exactly a nail biter and at times I was putting it down to stare out the window at birds flying by which is something I usually don't do when reading.

So yes, there's a decent story buried within the pages of this book, but there's quite a bit of chaff around it. show less

I have read a couple of the April Woo books. She is almost TOO quirky of a character, so you need to read them in sequence, I think. This one is an independent story about a woman turning 50 who decides she wants to overhaul her life. Her husband has a stroke right after she has a facelift, and the stories told about everyone's assumption she's a victim of domestic violence, complicated by her daughter's explanation that she has been in a car accident are hilarious. Great read.