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Friday 26 August 2011

Murder on the Boulevard by Kori Donahue

I should have realised from the hook, already with two errors (it's 20s and 50s not 20's and 50's) that this book was not going to be that sophisticated. I was not proved wrong.

The story is set in Hollywood in the 1950s, but there is very little reference to the era in the book, so I am not sure what the point of that setting was. The style of writing is rather banal and juvenile. The story skips over detail somewhat and the good guys get their bad guy rather too easily. There were some howling grammatical and punctuation errors; the author is an English teacher apparently, therefore, I would have expected better. The ending leaves you unsatisfactorily hanging with a `to be continued'. The reader deserves more respect than that. 


I have no desire to read the sequel, so I will never know how things pan out. That said, in essence, the plot concept and scope was not bad and the book could have been good, hence the three-star rating. More integration with the era in which it was set and perhaps some good advice from authors with some experience, along with some rather more sophisticated proofreading would help get this book some extra stars and commendation. I would say to the author, don't give up, but perhaps give this book some well-deserved revision.

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