Thursday, May 24, 2012

The Undertaker / William Brown


Reviewed by: BigAl

Genre: Thriller

Approximate word count: 120-125,000 words

Availability    
Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: YES  Smashwords: NO Paper: NO
Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store

Author:

The author of six mystery and suspense novels, a combination of traditionally and indie published, William Brown has also written four award-winning screenplays. Brown lives in Chicago when he’s not traveling the world with his wife. For more, visit his blog.

Description:

Pete Talbott was a California native and harried Boston computer wonk still grieving over the death of his wife Terri, when he found himself at the wrong end of Gino Parini's .45 reading his own obituary torn from that morning's newspaper.

Appraisal:

It isn’t often I’ll give a four star review to a book with this many copyediting misses. If your internal editor is relentless and unforgiving, you’ll spot a problem every few pages. The errors, although covering the full gambit of homonym errors, typos, and misspellings, are mostly not those, but minor issues. Things like missing little words that many people will blow past without noticing (although I did wonder what was going on when I read about “homeless guys laying a bench”) or an occasional extra or out of order word (“When they finally put the out flames …”).

If you ignore the frequent little issues, you’ll be left with a good book. There are some great characters in the protagonist, Pete, and his eventual love interest, who are likeable, sympathetic, and very funny. I thought I’d figured out the plot early on, but still wanted to see where it went. I discovered that what I thought was obvious, was, but it was only the tip of the iceberg. If you’re a fan of thrillers, The Undertaker would be a good choice for your next read.

FYI:

Adult language and some mild adult situations.

Format/Typo Issues:

A large number of proofing and copyediting errors.

Rating: **** Four stars

2 comments:

Joansz said...

I appreciate your enjoying the story so much that you are willing to ignore the large number of typos. That says a lot to the strength of the writing. But I think I'll pass, and not because my inner-editor would be screaming, but because the large number of errors that you found speaks to a lack of professionalism and respect the author is showing for the reader.

(Sorry for my long absence here--been busy, but glad to be back.)

BooksAndPals said...

Good to see you back, Joan. I struggled a lot with how to rank this one due to those issues. That this author has published both traditionally and as an indie concerned me because it is someone who should know better. Not that an indie not realizing how critical an adequate copy edit and proofing is should be excused, but I at least understand how it happens.