by #1 NYT Bestselling Author John Sandford!
G.P. Putnam Sons (Penguin) 2009
First sentence: Randy Whitcomb was a human stinkpot, a red-haired cripple with a permanent cloud over his head; a gap-toothed, pock-faced, paraplegic crank freak, six weeks out of the Lino Lakes medium-security prison.
Most meaningless sentence: She was a good-looking woman of no particularly identifiable age, who’d taken care to make herself mousy.
Even worse entire paragraph: description of complete contents of character’s wallet, including “a variety of wallet detritus”.
Things I’d rather do than read page 4: eat as many human babies as there are commas in this book.
I like swear words, if not used too gratuitously, and I love swear words directed at children. John Sandford understands this. John Sandford understands me. But unfortunately he put all his work into the first few sentences because the story falls apart before page one is over. He haphazardly shifts the focus from Randy Whitcomb to a tall bearded man and his companion and some sub-sub-sub-story about being in England too long, then to Brutus Cohn, whose name is John Lamb on his passport, then to Rosie Cruz, who is Brutus Cohn’s companion (or is he really John Lamb? Who knows? Who cares?). I was not sure who I was supposed to be paying attention to.
Perhaps the book eventually circles around to the swearing human stinkpot. Hopefully so because Sandford takes care to point out how unremarkable all his other characters are (she was wallpaper, she was background).
Coincidental best use of this book: wallpaper background
On the front flap, The Washington Post says John Sandford’s novels are beloved (which is 1 less than loved) for their “ingenious plots, vivid characters, crisp dialogue, and endless surprises”. I would like to share a sample of this “crisp dialogue”. The background to this crisp dialogue is that there’s a Toyota Camry.
“Ugly car,” he said, as he lifted the suitcase into the trunk…
“The best-selling car in America, in the least attention-getting color,” Cruz said.
If I were a slime mold, growing on a different slime mold, which was itself growing on a stack of putrid rotting cow guts in the soggiest part of the deepest chasm at the bottom of the ocean, I still would not call that “crisp”.
Other reviews: Sonia Reviews, True Crime Book Reviews
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