The Burrow

I love that the library is open, this time not just for outdoor pickup, or only for indoor grab-your-reserved-book-and-go, but for actual browsing in the shelves.  There were two youngsters getting their first library cards and there were two shiny new bestsellers on the NEW BOOKS cart right inside the front door.  I grabbed them both.

I started with Faye Kellerman's The Lost Boys, another in her series about the ultra-Orthodox widow married to the converted (but did he really have to??) homicide detective.  The plots are always interesting, the family dynamics are often compelling, and the characters grow with the passing years.  I don't have many main characters in my life who are also approaching 70; it adds an interesting dimension to the stories.

All of that was true in this book, but I spent much too much time screaming at the pages.  If ever a book were in need of a copy editor, it's this one.  After bringing a six pack to the table, a guest opens the can. No, you can bring the six pack and open a can... but it doesn't work the other way around.  

There was garbled syntax galore.  Something happens on one day at the bottom of one page and two paragraphs later it's happened the day before.  It got worse as the story went on.  First it was every 50 pages that I shrieked in horror; by the end, it was every 5 or 10.  

This wouldn't have passed muster in Ms Eiler's 12th Grade AP English class.  I can't believe Harper Collins was so lax.

I tossed that book on the Return to the Library space on the kitchen counter and picked up Harlan Coben's Win.  Coben is one of my favorite story tellers.  He's a writer in the vein of Dick Francis and Robert B. Parker; he lets the story tell itself while you pay attention to the characters/  

Windsor Horne Lockwood III is not an assassin - he's a sociopath who kills people when its convenient. He's fabulously wealthy and handsome and trained in all the ways to injure and maim which exist in the universe.  He's full of himself, but, as he reminds you frequently, he is worthy.  If that's off putting to you, you won't like the book.  If you want more of him, I invite you to dig in.

This one is edited to the bare bones.  There are no wasted words, let alone errant paragraphs.  I was sorry to see it end.

(I used to include what I'm reading in the sidebar, until I got so far behind I couldn't catch up.  Look for more on what's on my nightstand in the future.)