Progress: 81%
Platform: Kindle
Amazon Rating: four out of five stars
Book 1 out of 107
Here’s where we are…
Michael, our super assassin hero, has seemingly saved his love from a psychopath who is perverse enough to pluck out the eyeballs of his enemies and wear velvet pants in summer...at the same time.
 |
| I'm done serving the plot, so now now I get to leave again! I'll be back at the end, when it's convenient and our hero needs an emotional moment. |
That should be the end, right? But it’s not. Now that he’s dispensed his “mafia trying to kill me and my pregnant girlfriend” problem, he now has to return his “must save my crazy little brother” problem.
Conveniently, his girlfriend, having served her purpose as damsel in distress, feels the need to head off to Spain, where her family lives. This will leave Michael to do dark deeds in the service of a higher purpose without constantly asking, "Are you okay? You want something to eat? Mind if I kill a guy before we go to lunch? It won't take long. Yes, we can have Chinese. I hate Chinese, but anything for you."
It turns out that much of this book is Michael driving to places with women. This seems to be Mr. Hart’s technique for getting in relationship-building dialogue as well as plenty of exposition. I suppose it works, but the weird part is that as soon as a destination is reached, Michael’s female companion suddenly feels the need to be somewhere else as soon as possible.
The older (yet beautiful) mom character drives with Michael out to the old orphanage. Within ten minutes of arriving, she flies back via helicopter like she's needed for an important congrssional vote. Dialogue occurred. Exposition was delivered. Mission accomplished. The character can now go home because hanging around would wreck the scenes Mr. Hart has in mind for Michael.
Mike’s girlfriend, freshly rescued, doesn’t want to hang out for very long, even though the safest place on the planet seems to be the seat next to her superman boyfriend. Nope, she wants to head off to Spain. He drives her to the airport. Dialogue. Exposition. Off she goes.
Now Michael can finish up solving the mystery of who is murdering the guys who made his brother’s life miserable at the orphanage. The second story has now become the first story. The colorful, fun-to-hate bad guy has been replaced by a U.S. senator who has no morals and no concern for anything but his image. He doesn’t wear velvet pants, but we still know he’s a first class douche.
(By the way, that’s a good writer’s tip: If you want to quickly communicate douchiness, put a male character in velvet pants.)
The first clue to solving the mystery? Mike found it tucked in a drawer in the house where he killed he evil gangster who likes velvet pants. Very convenient. Too convenient. I guess we should be thankful Mike didn’t walk into a 7-11 and ask the Slurpee machine repairman if he had any incriminating evidence on a United States senator, to which the repairman would answer, “It just so happens…”
You know what’s weird? All these conveniences and contrivances are not bumming me out. I like this book. I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning when I can read some more and maybe finish it off.
How could that be? The characters. As simple as they are, as stereotypical, they continue to appeal with their big emotions and willingness to be committed to silly decisions. (The hot older mom heads off with Mike to meet the dangerous gangsters carrying a sack of cash AND a .38 she had no idea how to carry or use. Genius!)
What have we learned? Big dramatic characters that are simple, yet hugely drawn, can carry the day. But not as far an author might like. This book was a modest success, but didn’t exactly dominant the charts. Better, more detailed, more believable plotting, combined with this collection of characters, might have made for a bigger splash.
But what do I know? I’m a guy with 80 Twitter followers and 40 views of his blog. How does that math even work?
No comments:
Post a Comment