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melaniesreads 's review for:
Suspects
by Lesley Pearse
The premise of this book was exactly the kind of book I normally enjoy so I entered the competition to win a spot on the pigeonhole readalong.
What then followed was not what I expected at all. I ended up getting more enjoyment from the reader’s comments than the actual book.
I’m always honest in my reviews and as I have never written a book it seems unfair for me to criticise but I’m going to. As I am a reader and I have an opinion, well in the case of this book lots of opinions. So I will break it down into plot, characters and general thoughts.
Plot – I knew from the start who did it and why and there were more holes in it than a golf course. Too many sub plots that had nothing to do with the murder, although other books use these as red herrings or misdirection, here it did the opposite. There is a well known writing technique show don’t tell, I just wish the author had used it.
Characters – Throughout the entire book the author becomes more obsessed with the character’s weights and is extremely misogynistic. The men are heroes while the women are either domestic slaves, coerced to comply with the men’s needs or they are a religious zealot, an escort or a nasty piece of work. I was aghast that this was written by a woman. The icing on the cake was the female police officers whose only role was to pose undercover as girlfriends so the male police officers could solve the crimes. Considering this is set modern day I began to feel like it was possibly going to turn into an episode of Life on Mars and Gene Hunt would turn up in his Quattro and utter one of his infamous 70’s un pc lines.
General thoughts – I have it on good authority (my mum) that the author wrote many wonderful sagas. I know authors occasionally switch genre but a crime fiction writer she is not. I found way too much implausible and little things that I would normally let go annoyed the hell out of me. Prime example if you are going to mention a song at a funeral (quite important scene) get the song title right. In the age of Google it takes about five seconds.
These are only my personal opinions though and one man’s trash is another man’s treasure as they say.
What then followed was not what I expected at all. I ended up getting more enjoyment from the reader’s comments than the actual book.
I’m always honest in my reviews and as I have never written a book it seems unfair for me to criticise but I’m going to. As I am a reader and I have an opinion, well in the case of this book lots of opinions. So I will break it down into plot, characters and general thoughts.
Plot – I knew from the start who did it and why and there were more holes in it than a golf course. Too many sub plots that had nothing to do with the murder, although other books use these as red herrings or misdirection, here it did the opposite. There is a well known writing technique show don’t tell, I just wish the author had used it.
Characters – Throughout the entire book the author becomes more obsessed with the character’s weights and is extremely misogynistic. The men are heroes while the women are either domestic slaves, coerced to comply with the men’s needs or they are a religious zealot, an escort or a nasty piece of work. I was aghast that this was written by a woman. The icing on the cake was the female police officers whose only role was to pose undercover as girlfriends so the male police officers could solve the crimes. Considering this is set modern day I began to feel like it was possibly going to turn into an episode of Life on Mars and Gene Hunt would turn up in his Quattro and utter one of his infamous 70’s un pc lines.
General thoughts – I have it on good authority (my mum) that the author wrote many wonderful sagas. I know authors occasionally switch genre but a crime fiction writer she is not. I found way too much implausible and little things that I would normally let go annoyed the hell out of me. Prime example if you are going to mention a song at a funeral (quite important scene) get the song title right. In the age of Google it takes about five seconds.
These are only my personal opinions though and one man’s trash is another man’s treasure as they say.