Genealogy of a Murder by Lisa Belkin

Genealogy of a Murder: Four Generations, Three Families, One Fateful NightGenealogy of a Murder: Four Generations, Three Families, One Fateful Night by Lisa Belkin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Joe DeSalvo killed officer David Troy one summer night in Connecticut. DeSalvo was a lifelong criminal who had been paroled based largely on a recommendation by Al Tarlov, a doctor he’d come to know when he served as Tarlov’s lab assistant in prison. One was Italian, one Irish, one Jewish and of similar ages. This true crime is the subject of the book, but the author has approached it from a different direction. She has researched the literal genealogy of these three men in an attempt to discern why three grandsons of penniless immigrants ended up on the paths they did. Nature or nurture?

The stories are at times fascinating, at times boring. Too much time and space is devoted to the early ancestors and their poverty-stricken lives with families of a dozen plus children. I say too much because the author never answered her own question: how much did the genes or the family traditions and moral examples play a role? We don’t know. The fact is, the siblings of all of the characters went on to do very different things despite having the same parents and similar upbringings. The author also makes an odd choice to spend much of the book on Nathan Leopold, of the once famous Leopold and Loeb murders, even though he appears to have had no connection to the crime, and a similar amount to DeSalvo’s brother-in-law Dante Cosentino, who also had nothing to do with the murder or the life paths of any of the three. She apparently had access to their stories and found them intriguing, but I found them a mostly irritating distraction, although of some interest. Still, they remind me of the man looking for his keys under the streetlight because that’s where the light is best, even though that’s not where he dropped them. On the whole the book stands on the excellent quality of the writing and the inherently interesting facts of the case.

In the end, the oppressive conditions under which people lived as recently as the 1930s and 40s is eye-opening, and the author’s deep research is impressive. Joe DeSalvo had a genius IQ, taught himself piano, read good literature and wrote like it, and had many chances to have a good job and normal life. Why he made the choices he did is not answered in this book and probably never could have been, even by himself. I think this is true for many criminals I have encountered over the years in the FBI. How much is genetic and how much “nurture” can be debated, but for many, they are hard-wired that way by the time they hit their teens or even before and can never be rewired. Incarceration to keep them from harming others is really the only proper course. In my view, the tug-of-war between rehabilitation and punishment is irrelevant.

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How singer/guitarists rank

Some singers hold a guitar just as a prop and can’t play a lick, or maybe only two or three chords. Others can play fairly well, but not while singing or vice versa. Some are great guitarists who managed to make it as singers, but don’t have great voices or range. A very few play and sing at a top level. Here’s my chart of how some of the bigger names rank.

I played fairly well before I got arthritis in my thumbs. I’m hoping surgery will allow me to play again, but my point is that I can judge the guitar skill of anyone who plays an acoustic or classical guitar if I’ve heard them enough. Judging singing is more of a taste. I can’t sing on key, so I have only my own ear to judge. Some singers have great voices, some great power and range, some have voices with character or stage presence. Anyone who becomes a famous singer can carry a tune, so the scale is more of how much I enjoy their voice or style.

I’m leaving out nearly all lead guitarists or lead singers from rock or pop bands since they mostly flat-pick, which pretty much all sounds the same to me, at least when blasting from an amp at full volume and the guitarist is “shredding” on the 14th fret and bending half the notes. Most of the best known of that genre just play as many notes as fast as they can then may even smash the guitar. How is that any good? Your taste may vary. The one exception on the chart is Eric Clapton. I’ve seen several videos of him finger picking  an acoustic guitar and I know he is excellent guitarist although his singing is mediocre at best. Feliciano is a flat-picker, not fingerstyle, but all you have to do is listen to him play Flight of the Bumble Bee  and there’s no question how skilled he is. Voices for all singers deteriorate as they age, so my judgments are based on what I remember from their best years. The best classical guitarists are more skilled as guitarists than anyone on this chart.

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

Birnam WoodBirnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Mira and Shelley are two young Kiwi women who have founded an underground horticultural collective called Birnam Wood. They find spots in New Zealand that are unused, e.g. roadside strips, plant crops there, and sell them. While exploring a vacant site, Mira encounters Robert, a shameless exploitative American billionaire seeking to savage the land to extract valuable minerals, but Mira doesn’t realize his true plans and forms an alliance with him. It’s fair to call this an eco-thriller. The premise is imaginative and the writing mostly entertaining. It’s a true page turner through the last third of the book. But rating it accurately is impossible because there were so many good things about it (just mentioned), but smothered in abysmal writing through most of the book. I don’t know how to balance them out so I chose three stars almost at random.

So I told you the good; what’s so bad? Let’s start with the length. The hardback edition is 423 pages holding what should be a 250 page book. As if that’s not enough, it’s almost solid ink from margin to margin. If you open the book at nearly any point, there will be no dialogue and no more than one paragraph break on a page. It must have almost twice the words per page as the typical thriller, which means the effective page count is more like 700. The main reason for this is that the author writes almost entirely in run-on sentences. I got so frustrated I actually counted two. On p. 156-157 one sentence ran for 278 words. At least it had one semicolon. I counted a 220-word sentence on page 186. The author and the editors, Jenna Johnson and Bella Lacey, must have flunked English 1A or lost their blue pencils. All three of them should have had someone whop them upside their heads. It was agonizing to read for the first 272 pages, where the action begins, but if you can learn to skip the interior 90% of those long run-on sentences, it moves okay. In addition to the ridiculous surplus verbiage, the plot revolves around the collective members, rather obnoxious tree-hugging vegans arguing with each other in lengthy PC politco-babble about their devil’s bargain with the American corporate Lucifer, Robert.

Back to the good stuff. The author has done a creditable job of making the characters both original and believable. There’s a complicated relationship between Mira, the leader, and Shelley, the second banana, between Robert and the owner of the property in question, a pretentious businessman who was recently knighted, and between Mira and Tony, an ex-member (and ex-boyfriend) who left the group and is hell-bent on exposing Robert’s evil shenanigans. She has a knack for filling in little homey details to make events seem real and must have done a lot of research. The setting was exotic and interesting, at least for me. There were many witty, amusing moments right from the start, although crammed into 200-word sentences.

But worst of all is the ending. {Spoiler alert — sort of — but not really. You might want to stop here if you plan on reading the book anyway} I don’t actually know the ending, because I don’t know how it ended. There was violence at the end. I don’t know who survived and who didn’t. I don’t know what happened to those who did survive. There were deaths – did anyone get punished or even investigated? I read to the end, so that’s not the problem. The author just left the readers hanging in the middle of it all. I’ve read some other reviews and they all seem to think that was the ending. I can’t believe the author would leave it like that. I can’t believe any editor would allow it unless – and this is what I think must be the case – the author is already working on the sequel to finish the story. When there is a series like this, there should be a warning that this is Book 1 in the XYZ mysteries or whatnot. There is no such warning and nothing at the end promotes any Volume II. Strange. I guess the bottom line is that despite these egregious problems, I was very engaged at least for the last third of the book and eager to read the next page. It went faster than the length would indicate and I admit I enjoyed a lot of it until I became enraged at the “ending.”

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What3words in the news – Swift, San Francisco, Sioux

You know the drill: What3words is the website/app that pinpoints 3mx3m squares around the globe and tags them with three words. This works well for first responders and delivery people among others, especially if there is no street address. The word combo is easier to remember than latitude/longitude coordinates. I like to find word combinations that are particularly newsworthy, appropriate, or amusing. Search my blog for more examples. Here are a few more I recently came across.

tailor.swift.concert – Albacete, Spain. Okay, it’s 120 miles from Madrid where Tay Tay performed recently, but that’s still pretty coincidental considering that 85% of the word combinations fall in the oceans, Antarctica or other uninhabited regions.

large.crazy.ranks falls on San Francisco City Hall. Anyone familiar with the dysfunction in that city government will immediately see the connection. But there’s another interesting spot in the same building.

riding.flesh.soon also lands on that building. For those not in the Bay Area, SF City Hall is the most sought after wedding venue in the region. The building itself is beautiful and the staff there often holds mass weddings, especially gay ones during Gay Pride Week.

former.united.nations is located near Buffalo, South Dakota in the heart of the area where nine Sioux tribes were once a united nation.

 

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (Ernest Cunningham, #1)Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this mystery novel, but it’s not for everyone. The purported narrator, Ernest, is part of a family of killers, although most of the killings weren’t intentional. He also writes about how to write crime novels. He talks to the reader (or in my case, listener) throughout the book, breaking the fourth wall. That can be off-putting for many. He also describes the ten “rules” of crime fiction and assures us that he follows them, thus making the mystery “fair.” The final denouement is so convoluted that I can’t say I agree, but it doesn’t matter much. If you’re one of those people who must feel like you have a chance of solving it as you read, you’ll not be happy at the ending.

I enjoyed the book for its witty tone throughout, and its plethora of amusing observations about life and universal foibles. His descriptions and similes are clever and entertaining. There were too many characters for me to keep track of. If you choose to read it, I suggest you do so it one sitting in order not to lose the thread. Or make a diagram of characters and their relationships. I also enjoyed the reader’s Australian accent, which, not surprisingly, is appropriate since the book is set in Australia. The bottom line: it passed the time pleasantly.

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The Iliad by Homer (Jeff Harding reader)

The IliadThe Iliad by Homer
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

My rating applies only to the audiobook read by Jeff Harding. The idea of the massive classic was daunting, but I read that this new translation is very good and I thought I could enjoy it as oral poetry. The reader, Harding, has good pacing, slowed down for the modern reader who is unfamiliar with the classic language and subject matter. I was able to follow the convolutions for the first twenty minutes, but I did not like Harding’s voice. It had a smarmy quality that reminded me a great deal Johnny Carson’s voice as Art Fern. I knew I couldn’t take twenty hours of it, so I gave up. Maybe I’ll venture to start on the print version.

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How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil

How the World Really Works: A Scientist's Guide to Our Past, Present and FutureHow the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future by Vaclav Smil
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Smil sets forth a dizzying array of statistics backed up with extensive citations of sources. These range over many technical and scientific topics. He asserts that they show that human civilization as we know it depends on four “pillars”: steel, ammonia, cement, and plastics. He spends a great deal of time debunking the notion of decarbonization, i.e. the total cessation of using fossil fuels. That seems to me to be something of a straw man since I’ve never heard the term before this book, much less heard of anyone who advocated it. The reader could get the impression Smil opposes the green movement in general, although later in the book, that seems inaccurate. The book is almost written as a reference book rather than an opinion piece or textbook, although it has elements of all three.

Smil is no doubt an extremely well-read and competent scientist and writer, but the book isn’t going to fall into the pleasure reading category for many people. I read it because it was a book club choice. There were many interesting, even fascinating, tidbits of knowledge imparted among the drudgery of plowing through more statistics. I especially liked the chapter on assessing risk. Smil points out the degree to which people discount relatively risky, i.e. likely, dangers (like speeding in cars) while fearing things that are much less likely, e.g. terrorist attack. I knew this already, but it was interesting to see it quantified and exemplified. He concludes by saying, convincingly, that those crying apocalypse and those gushing over a new world order of health and plenty are wrong. He pretty much says everybody is wrong and things are just going to go on as they always have until something we can’t predict changes it. In the end the combination of tedium and the absence of any real useful guidance makes the book a disappointing read.

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This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

This Tender LandThis Tender Land by William Kent Krueger
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

At the risk of sounding like a literature professor, this book is completely derivative. It’s set in the 1930s during the American Great Depression but other than that it is a copycat of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn except that instead of the warmth, wit, and almost plausibility of that classic work, this one substitutes child cruelty beyond imagination. In this way it also copies Dickens. I didn’t realize until I heard the author’s postscript that he actually intended to copy both. Why? Dickens was horrific. I finished this only out of duty to my book club, but by coincidence we had just finished reading Huckleberry Finn. The timing was unfortunate.

Another thing I didn’t like was the author’s need to insert 21st Century social issues into a 1930s story (e.g. LGBTQ). The anachronism was jarring and eye-rolling; it appeared the author was just trying to check all the liberal boxes. He must have been afraid to be as authentic as Twain. It resembled a fairy tale in that the children are pure and kind and generous, as are nearly all the poor people, while all the authorities and rich people are greedy and cruel. Real life doesn’t work that way. As if that wasn’t enough to spoil the read, towards the end one character appears to have supernatural powers. Gag me with a spoon. Still, it was readable to the end, so I’ll give it a second star.

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What3Words in the News – Netanyahu, Hunter Biden, Dr. Pepper

All right, I’ve discovered a few more W3W addresses that are remarkably appropriate.

blasted.rocket.shots land on the Beit Aghion, Benjamin Netanyahu’s current residence.

doctor.pepper.soda turns out to be in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The inspiration for the name of the actual drink is supposed to have been a Dr. Charles T. Pepper of Virginia, although he lived farther west.

never.prosecuted.hunter leads to Washington Court House, Ohio. That’s not a court house; it’s the name of a real town. The real Hunter Biden is being prosecuted in an actual court house in Washington, D.C.

Our Ignorant Newsmakers – under a Petri dish

I often post malapropisms that I hear news reporters or announcers make, but today it comes from a woman interviewed on the radio. She was talking about the tensions between Arabs and Jews over the Hamas-Israeli conflict. I don’t know her ethnicity or which side she was “on” but was apparently identifiable as being aligned with one or the other. She said she felt uncomfortable, like everyone was looking at her. She said she felt she was constantly “under a Petri dish.”

The Inner Circle by Brad Meltzer

The Inner Circle (Culper Ring, #1)The Inner Circle by Brad Meltzer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This schlocky potboiler is exactly what I expected it to be: full of conspiracy theories up to the highest levels of government, an unlikely hero, murder, contrived sexual tension, and writing dumbed down to the 8th grade level. I listened to the audiobook, which I hadn’t realized was read by Scott Brick, so you can add gross overacting. Brick can make the ingredients listed on a toothpaste tube sound like we’re all on the brink of an apocalypse. If this doesn’t sound like much praise, it isn’t, but I just wanted something droning in the background while I worked on my computer. I knew what Meltzer’s writing was like. Of course he also left the plot hanging which was telegraphed by the subtitle. This is the first in a series so he couldn’t resolve anything. I can’t recommend it, but I’m giving it three stars because it’s honest; it’s exactly as advertised. Think of it as a Hallmark movie equivalent in the mystery novel genre.

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Whalefall by Daniel Kraus

WhalefallWhalefall by Daniel Kraus
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The cover of the book tells you all you need to know: a fictional diver gets swallowed by a sperm whale. The writer somehow got a publisher to accept a 300-page [more on that in a bit] book about it. I originally requested the audiobook from the library, but that was taking a while to come in, so I then requested the print book. Both came in at the same time. I started listening to the audiobook, but gave up on that because the reader had a wimpy teen-like voice. To be fair, the book’s narrator is a wimpy teen.

So how do you make an entire book about being swallowed by a whale? You don’t; and the author didn’t. There are many pages with a single word on them, others with just one short sentence. That’s why the 300 pages is misleading, presumably stretched with mucho white space for commercial purposes. Much of the “dialogue” consists of whale noises. The whole concept is preposterous and the writing pedestrian at best. If I had any other book to read, I wouldn’t have finished this, but with plenty of skimming, it was easy to complete in a few hours, although I did spread those out over a few days since I still didn’t have another book in at the library. Since I did at least read to the end, I’ll give it two stars, but I don’t recommend this to anyone.

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The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda

The Last House GuestThe Last House Guest by Megan Miranda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was slow to get hooked into this book, but in the end, I enjoyed it. The author is good at setting the scene and making the reader feel he is there. In this case, the scene is the coast of Maine in a tiny town appropriately called Littleport. The undisputed ruler of the town, Grant Loman, owns a vast real estate empire. In addition to his own monstrous house he rents out the many surrounding cabins, cottages and other properties to summer vacationers. His two children, Parker and Sadie, rich and beautiful, were raised in private schools in Boston but are now the heirs apparent to the empire. Our protagonist, however, is Sadie’s best friend, Avery, an orphaned teenager at one time, but now employed by the Lomans to manage the Littleport rentals. Despite the loss of her parents in a car accident, the death of her grandmother, and a rebellious period, she has made her way in life and become Sadie’s bestie.

There is an end-of-season party and a death. Was it a suicide? A murder? Avery is both a suspect and a self-appointed, obsessed investigator. The suspense builds slowly as more and more information is revealed to the reader. This is done in a way that is trendy but which I find irritating: a constant barrage of time switches from the current day to an earlier time, usually the day of the party, but sometimes even earlier as Avery relates bits of history she is remembering. Whatever happened to telling a story in chronological order? In any event, the reader is not told important events and facts until near the very end making it impossible to make a logical guess to solve the mystery until then. The denouement is a little too pat and predictable; at least, it’s predictable once you are told all the necessary stuff in the final chapters. The storytelling maintains a slightly creepy noirish feel throughout while conveying the isolation and grandeur of the Maine coast (which I can imagine but have never seen). Enjoy it more for the atmosphere and the characters than the plot.

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A Tribute to Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve

I want to take this opportunity to pay my own tribute to Rancho San Antonio County Park and Open Space Preserve (RSA). RSA is both a county park (one part) and the rest an open space preserve owned and managed by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD), a separate governmental entity that spans San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. The whole thing is administered by MROSD. It has been a favorite place of mine since I moved back to the valley in 1980 and today was a somewhat special day.

I went on my regular out and back run today from Lot 1 (formerly called the horse trailer lot) to the far western point on the Rogue Valley Trail (N37 19.772 W122 05.139 to N37 20.332 W122 07.638 for you geocachers) and three unusual things happened. On the road to the farm next to the Lower Meadow Trail I saw a buck with an impressive set of antlers just to the left of the trail. The deer there are used to people, although they will usually avoid us and the bucks are shyer than the does. This one stayed put and eyed me, then as I got close it lowered its antlers and started toward me. This startled me for a second, but it immediately became clear he was heading to cross the road behind me. He trotted briskly across the road  and I turned to watch as he leapt over the wire fence (at approximately N37 19.913 W122 5.848). The fence isn’t very high, but it was a magnificent display nonetheless. There was only one other person who saw this, a man coming the opposite way. He stopped in his tracks and said “Wow! Amazing!” I told him we got to see a nature show.

That was on the way up. On the way back I was nearing the parking areas and two old men (by that, I mean about my age) were walking ahead of me when we all saw a dust devil whirl up some dirt from the trail directly ahead of us, It formed a violent funnel for a few seconds then disappeared just as quickly as it had formed. As I passed, one man said to the other, laughing, “I guess we can tell people we saw a tornado today.” It was no tornado, but it was unusual.

Finally, on the very last leg, on the Permanente Creek Trail I saw a lone coyote standing right in the middle of the trail about a hundred yards ahead of me. It didn’t seem to notice me as it was facing the other way. I kept running, expecting it to run off. Instead, it started trotting slowly away from me, toward the PG&E Trailhead. I wasn’t gaining on it at first, but after twenty yards or so it spotted some hikers on that trail where it crosses the trail we were on and it slowed, then stopped. I kept going and got to about fifty yards away when it turned and noticed me. It then dodged into the bushes to my left. I never saw it after that. Behind me was another jogger gaining on me (almost everyone is faster than me now) so I turned to him and asked if he’d seen it, too. He confirmed he had and gave me a big grin.

Where else in a busy high-tech hub like Silicon Valley can you see such a fun nature display? I’m not even including the everyday attractions of the place like the cute baby goats at Deer Hollow Farm, flocks of wild turkeys and quail, bunnies, and the hikers talking a myriad of foreign languages. I hear Mandarin and Spanish nearly every time I go there and have often heard German, Japanese, Italian, Greek, Hebrew, and various Indian or other Asian subcontinent languages I don’t know. If I want the place all to myself I can go early on a cold, rainy winter morning. The nature show is often great those days. So RSA, my hat (or running cap) is off to you. Thank you for the many years of enjoyment.

The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough

The Johnstown FloodThe Johnstown Flood by David McCullough
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m no history buff. I only read this because my book club chose it. But I loved it. From page 1 it’s a thriller. You know in general what happened. The title tells you that if you didn’t already know anything about it. But you don’t know exactly why or how it happened and you certainly don’t know who will survive and who won’t. The author personalizes the victims and the parties who may or may not have been responsible for this tragedy.

I learned a great deal about dams and spillways. There’s a lot more to them than I thought. In our valley there are some reservoirs that aren’t allowed to fill up even during heavy rains. I’ve always thought that was a near-criminal waste of capacity in this drought-prone region. Now I understand why engineers take the cautious approach they do. The author sneaked in lessons in history and engineering while foolish me thought it was just an exciting suspense story. He also taught us valuable lessons in human nature, like how people become inured to warnings and pretty much anything they don’t want to believe. Everyone knew the dam was dangerous, but nobody did anything about it. It’s always someone else’s responsibility. It’s the chicken little or the boy who cried wolf. Only after the worst happens did people accept it was real this time.

I listened to the audiobook and I can affirm that the reader did a perfect job – not too maudlin, not too casual. There was just enough drama in his voice without undue histrionics. I highly recommend this book.

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A Flaw in the Design by Nathan Oates

A Flaw in the DesignA Flaw in the Design by Nathan Oates
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In this umpteenth take on the unreliable narrator shtick we hear the voice of Gil, a professor of creative writing at a not-so-prestigious Vermont college. Gil and his wife Molly are struggling financially and his writing career is going nowhere. Suddenly Gil’s obscenely rich sister and her husband are killed in a car crash and the will names Gil as the guardian of their son Matthew, at that point 17 years old and finishing his senior year at a prep school. Gil despises Matthew for reasons hinted at but not immediately revealed, but he feels a duty to his sister and the job comes with a healthy stipend for expenses, so he and Molly agree.

Matthew was, when Gil last knew him, a foul-mouthed, spoiled, selfish little brat. There was a dark incident that is finally explained about page 50. Note to author: why wait? Either tell it right up front or save as a big reveal at the end. Why hint at something you’re about to reveal in a few pages? But I digress. When we learn of it, it is not clear whether Matthew did something evil or was otherwise at fault. Gil may even have been more responsible, especially since the story is told from his viewpoint with his assumptions and conclusions about what happened.

Now, years after that incident, Matthew settles in with Gil and Molly and Gil becomes increasingly paranoid about having him in the house. Every time Matthew smiles, Gil sees an evil smirk. Every time Matthew helps Gil’s daughters, his cousins, Gil sees it as an attempt to weasel his way into their confidence in order to set up some nefarious deed later. Molly and the girls think Matthew is nice and Gil is overreacting, judging him based on a childhood incident. The money he brings is certainly welcome. Then there’s a police investigation into the fatal crash, but we’re not told much about it. Matthew also manages to gain entrance to Gil’s creative writing class. The stories he writes Gil finds disturbing, taunting, while other students and Molly think they’re harmless fiction. Gil becomes increasingly unhinged. The story becomes a psychological mystery. Is Gil going crazy and persecuting his innocent nephew? Is Matthew secretly building a plot against Gil?

I like the basic plot setup to this point, although I’m tired of the unreliable narrator hook. I did keep reading to the end and enjoyed it enough to give it the three stars, but I found Gil to be too unreliable through the latter pages. In plain language, the author overdid it. Gil just seemed wacko, even though Matthew clearly showed himself to still be a foul-mouthed entitled brat at times. Neither garners our sympathy, which means it’s easy to lose interest in the outcome. Still, it was cleverly written with enough suspense building after the slow beginning. I did foresee the twist at the very end, which usually gives me triumphant satisfaction with the ending, but in this case I did not find it fulfilling.

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