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A review by zaisgraph
Plum Island by Nelson DeMille
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Nelson DeMille books are always on sale, one day my curiosity got the best of me and I picked-up Plum Island. Why? Because it was #1 in a series, had a cute cover plus the book had a map inside. I'm a sucker for those. I did not know what to expect in all honesty, what I got was a light-hearted, by-the-numbers detective story. It has decent charm and I liked how the story evolved into a swash buckling adventure. This is not a figure of speech, if you've read this, you'll know what I mean.
John Corey is a brash and charming detective. He is cocky, has a sarcastic sense of humor and gets the job done. He is not a suave detective and his methods remind me of 80's cops. I think I like this character very much. Nelson wrote him well.
Nelson has a knack for describing things. Each scene can be very very detailed. The conversations can be very long. I can appreciate how much information he stuffed inside Plum Island. Though I think this bloated the page count considerably. I'm not sure if he worked with an editor for this novel or if he had a page count quota but at least 20 percent of the pages could've been trimmed in my humble opinion. Because of it's length, despite it's very strong and engaging start, it overstayed its welcome to me. I felt like everything could've been cleanly wrapped up way quicker. This considerably diminished my reading experience.
I have a trade paperback of Plum Island. I read it while listening to the audiobook. I think the narration was exquisite and fit the character extremely well. I'm still on the fence whether I would continue this series. I'll think about it next year, so I can't honestly say that I recommend this book.
John Corey is a brash and charming detective. He is cocky, has a sarcastic sense of humor and gets the job done. He is not a suave detective and his methods remind me of 80's cops. I think I like this character very much. Nelson wrote him well.
Nelson has a knack for describing things. Each scene can be very very detailed. The conversations can be very long. I can appreciate how much information he stuffed inside Plum Island. Though I think this bloated the page count considerably. I'm not sure if he worked with an editor for this novel or if he had a page count quota but at least 20 percent of the pages could've been trimmed in my humble opinion. Because of it's length, despite it's very strong and engaging start, it overstayed its welcome to me. I felt like everything could've been cleanly wrapped up way quicker. This considerably diminished my reading experience.
I have a trade paperback of Plum Island. I read it while listening to the audiobook. I think the narration was exquisite and fit the character extremely well. I'm still on the fence whether I would continue this series. I'll think about it next year, so I can't honestly say that I recommend this book.