Can't we do better than this?

Title: Shock Wave

Author: John Sanford

Progress: 100%

Platform: Kindle

Amazon Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

NYT BS Hardcover List: #8 (former number 1)

Book 3 out of 107

Look. I'm not a book snob. I like genre novels. I like detective stories and sci-fi and fantasy and pretty much any kind of well told story other than romance. Even then, The Bridges of Madison County made me blubber like a school girl.

But I have to say ... Shock Wave, despite its sales and it's 4.5 Amazon stars, is mediocre at best.

I liked Virgil, or at least the idea of Virgil, the long-haired hippy detective who favors vintage T-shirts and likes to go fishing as part of his mystery solving process.

However, Virgil never comes alive. I never get a sense of how his worldview affects his detecting, his relationships, or how he's changed by dealing with this crazy bomber who keeps blowing up completely innocent people. And after Virgil, almost all the characters kind of blur together. Many of the men have a way with absurd metaphors and wise cracks. The women are all sexy and vaguely smitten with Virgil.

A novel, even a genre novel, should be just a little more than this. Shouldn't it?

Mr. Sanford is a good writer. He comes so close at times to getting at something deeper, something funnier, something more exciting. Every time he comes close to a real moment, to a real surprise, he backs away. 

Virgil never makes a surprising choice, not one. Virgil ponders god before he sleeps, but despite the fact that people are dying at a disturbing rate, it doesn't seem to phase him or color his chats with whatever deity he thinks is listening.

And by the way, Virgil gets a guy killed. He mistakenly fingers Wyatt as a suspect and the bomber kills him in an effort to get the case closed. Virgil doesn't seem to care, never gives it a second thought. His last thoughts in the book are about the three women he recently met and whom he didn't bang.

I'm sure this book took a lot of effort to write. For all I know it took a year of labor, of re-writing, editing, of getting feedback, of polishing and then more re-writing. Mr Sanford created an mildly entertaining novel, and it reads like he did it with ease. That's the problem. It feels easy. Once read, it leaves nothing behind, leaves no mark on the mind. 

When I want that kind of cotton candy, no-substance entertainment, I can watch TV. There is an episode of Law & Order on somewhere pretty much 24 hours a day. From a novel, I want just a little bit more. I hope my next one delivers that little bit more. 

Now cracking open the new John Grisham, The Litigators.