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A review by pokay
The Con Artist by Fred Van Lente
2.0
I so wanted to love this. It tried to be so many things and fell flat on almost all of it. It is such a pity because SDCC is such a great idea for a location of a murder mystery, but Van Lente failed to utilize this setting completely.
Where to begin?
First of all the main character: Mike. I have so many things to say about him, and none of them are good. He is a totally boring, bland, and forgettable character. Even having just finished the book a few hours ago I would struggle to describe him to someone. He comes off mostly problematic, pathetic, and petty. There were even points throughout the book where I forgot his name.
This was supposed to be a murder mystery, and Van Lente totally failed to convey that throughout this book. At no point are you able to really delve into the mystery, clues, motives etc. because Van Lente spends very little time on it.
This book comes off WAY to personal. It comes off more as 250 page rant about Van Lente's own opinions and feelings about comic con, the comic industry, Hollywood, Hollywood monetizing comic con, copyright, creator credit, sexism and sexual harassment in the industry. Which are all pretty valid arguments, but what are they all doing in this book? They aren't weaved in, they aren't really brought up in natural ways. He makes a point of standing up for the woman in the industry who have been treated badly - continue to be treated badly. He tries to rectify it, but then he goes on to make fun of people with disabilities and other very problematic opinions on minorities, while also shitting on fandoms and fans (while to be fair there are some toxic AF fandoms, he and Mike come off pretty much hating them) and causing us to forget about the good stuff he's written because he complains so damn much.
Van Lente uses this book to kill off a potential real-life person he had to deal with (guesses are former DC editor Eddie Berganza who has a history of sexual harassment against female co-workers) and the scary/creepy/greedy CEO is meant to be former Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter.
Now, this could have all been overlooked, if the mystery had been great. Too bad it sucked. I can't think of murder mystery I've read that was this bad. He has all these weird subplots that go nowhere, supposedly supporting characters who come and go at random and whose plot lines are randomly dropped, and don't even get me started on the weird half-ass "romance".
Overall, I'm just sad. This had so much potential, Van Lente knows this industry inside and out and mostly spends the book complaining about it angrily. It was a wasted opportunity to utilize one of the craziest events in Nerd culture and all it did was waste my time ranting about the industry in its current day state.
Where to begin?
First of all the main character: Mike. I have so many things to say about him, and none of them are good. He is a totally boring, bland, and forgettable character. Even having just finished the book a few hours ago I would struggle to describe him to someone. He comes off mostly problematic, pathetic, and petty. There were even points throughout the book where I forgot his name.
This was supposed to be a murder mystery, and Van Lente totally failed to convey that throughout this book. At no point are you able to really delve into the mystery, clues, motives etc. because Van Lente spends very little time on it.
This book comes off WAY to personal. It comes off more as 250 page rant about Van Lente's own opinions and feelings about comic con, the comic industry, Hollywood, Hollywood monetizing comic con, copyright, creator credit, sexism and sexual harassment in the industry. Which are all pretty valid arguments, but what are they all doing in this book? They aren't weaved in, they aren't really brought up in natural ways. He makes a point of standing up for the woman in the industry who have been treated badly - continue to be treated badly. He tries to rectify it, but then he goes on to make fun of people with disabilities and other very problematic opinions on minorities, while also shitting on fandoms and fans (while to be fair there are some toxic AF fandoms, he and Mike come off pretty much hating them) and causing us to forget about the good stuff he's written because he complains so damn much.
Van Lente uses this book to kill off a potential real-life person he had to deal with (guesses are former DC editor Eddie Berganza who has a history of sexual harassment against female co-workers) and the scary/creepy/greedy CEO is meant to be former Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter.
Now, this could have all been overlooked, if the mystery had been great. Too bad it sucked. I can't think of murder mystery I've read that was this bad. He has all these weird subplots that go nowhere, supposedly supporting characters who come and go at random and whose plot lines are randomly dropped, and don't even get me started on the weird half-ass "romance".
Overall, I'm just sad. This had so much potential, Van Lente knows this industry inside and out and mostly spends the book complaining about it angrily. It was a wasted opportunity to utilize one of the craziest events in Nerd culture and all it did was waste my time ranting about the industry in its current day state.