John Mertus

Boring supervillain

Revisado: 04-13-25

This is a car chase book. What I mean is everything is known, who’s good and who is bad. So you follow chapter after chapter, nothing exciting but a perfect villain who knows everything. And of course the good guy who of is on the run. I didn’t know the details but I knew what was going to happen overall. This book could have been written by AI.

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Boring

Revisado: 01-20-25

Nothing happens in this book. After the first chapters one knows the good guys and the bad guys. There are no interesting characters, no protagonist that have challenges to overcome. The characters, even the bad guys act rationally averting the “run down the center of the street as the car chasing you” stupidly that is needed for this type of book. NOTHING HAPPENS to build tension. There is no mystery to solve. What a come down from his first two books.

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Meh

Revisado: 04-10-23

It amazes that a writer with so much descriptive talent can’t write an interesting story. It start off well but by the time that the back story is told its obvious and boring. The characters are unbelievable, they tell you how they are feeling rather than acting it out. Nothing particularly exciting happens, except for a minor unrealistic ending twist, it’s was well, just a story that could have been written by ChatGPT.

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A most boring book

Revisado: 03-08-22

Every so often I get a bad book but this one was ridicules. The author came up with a simple idea, one that would have made a great short story and padded it into hours. I kept waiting for something to happen but it never did. I like stories with discover but here there was none until an entire conversation to explain was happened at the end. You fail to feel for the character. The author must have though how cleaver I am for the idea but there is a reason other authors don’t try this trick.

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Nicely Balanced

Revisado: 11-23-21

McGarrity is not good at big plots. His writing is stilted and unbelievably. But put in the west, among horses and he draws the characters so well you can smell them. This story may be too violent for some but that was needed to created the horrible antagonist. Despite the fact his characters act rationally, he creates tension. He never resorts to having the protagonist “run the middle of a street while being chased by cars.” And the ending was very nice.

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How can such a good writer write so bad

Revisado: 03-20-21

I love Coben. I consider The Woods one of the great suspense novels. But Coben could not make his mind which type of his three styles he should use and decided to write in all of them. The result is a zero dimensional Win who spouts teenage philosophy. There is no balance in Win’s character, no development. Coben may have been trying to write satire but if so, it’s so poorly done I couldn’t tell. That said, the plot twists were good although the initial crime too wimpy to support the main story. Basically it’s a book that needed an editor to hit Coben over the head and say, “Good plot but rewrite it without Win”. But when you become too famous, no one can tell you to rewrite.

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Another excellent book

Revisado: 11-03-19

John Sandford is one of the few writers that can write a book from both the protagonist and antagonist sides and make it interesting. First he has great humor and dialogue that feels real. Second, although you know who dun it, you still are interested in how he is going to piece together his case. Lastly, you are invested in the characters.

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A master at his craft

Revisado: 10-19-18

This book shows a very good writer in complete control of his craft. He painlessly weaves threads together to make an entertaining story. There is subtle humor, well drawn people and an interesting, albeit not complex, plot. I enjoyed how multiple sides of the story are told. The only weakness is that, in order to keep excitement, he hides information from the reader that the characters know. I accept this as necessary but can be frustrating. The performance reading matches the book and only occasionally clashes. For example the reader will put an inflection into his voice that the author later explains. Audible should experiment with getting permission to cut these out. Altogether a fun read.

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Just Bad

Revisado: 02-19-18

Without question is the worse thing I’ve ever listened to. It’s nothing but recordings of people saying the same thing over and over again. There is no storyline, nothing to build tension and the narrator’ writing is atrocious. The whole story could have made an interesting 45 mins but they tried to drag it out to 7 hours. If one need seven hours of material, the first would have been setting the scene before the murder. Followed how it was discovered and the initial reactions, filled by a build up of frustration. But they told the whole story, except one thing, in the first 5 mins. Also they should have followed a few people to provide continuity, not “hey how many people can we find to say the exact same thing.” Remember the rule of writing: less is more. The real failure was I never felt a connection to anyone, I never felt anything, I was just told things in a jumbled fashion. Luckily I could listen to if at 2x speed so I only wasted 3 hours.

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Poor debut for a series

Revisado: 03-09-17

I've enjoyed many book by Robert Crais so I jumped at the chance to read his first in the Elvis Cole series at a discount price. Alas, this book can only be described as terrible, unexciting, and at 3.95, I felt I overplayed by 3.94. The major issues I have with it was no tension, poor plot, unrealistic characters and sophomoric philosophy. The antagonist was undeveloped and a pure wimp. The violence was overblown and mostly unnecessary. And the attempted humor was trite and not funny. I'm glad Crais continued to write but you should read other books by him and avoid this one.

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