Patricia
Cornwell
I
have to admit that i have been sorely disappointed by this book:
Without having gone back to look at their reviews,
i seem to remember having enjoyed the (i think) two of Cornwell’s
previous works about Kay Scarpetta, a forensic pathologist (is that
the term?) who is Cornwell’s primary detective. That ought to bode
well for Predator,
same author, same characters, same concept.
This
time, though, it is completely different. I was at least a hundred
pages in before it was even clear that i would continue reading, and
more than a hundred and fifty before i began to understand enough to
even begin to care about any of the characters (any! even the ones
i’d encountered in the previous books) and whether they lived or
died. That’s not a good result for an author! I think that a good
portion of my disappointment is with the style or writing Cornwell
uses here; she changes perspective, plot, and characters very
frequently, and i found it difficult to understand what was happening
where to whom, much of the time.
In
addition, many of the characters, even the positive ones, are ~ or
appear to be ~ unlikeable, and i didn’t like them. Furthermore,
and this can be an issue with many authors who have written a number
of series books, it may be that too much links to previous books,
too much is assumed to be understood by the reader, when the first
time (or close to it) reader even of a book well into a series still
needs to be brought in and helped to understand. That did not happen
here. All in all, unsatisfying and, i’m afraid, by my criterion,
not a success: I won’t read another Cornwell based simply on her
name and mine experience here; to be sure, i may well read another of
her books, but such an action would be based on the success of others
of her works i’ve read, not this one. Sad.
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