Reviewed by: BigAl
Genre: Thriller
Approximate word count: 70-75,000 words
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Author:
“Edward
Blythe grew up in a cow-town in southeastern Arizona. Growing up without a TV,
he became a voracious reader and writer. An accountant by trade, Edward lives
and works in southern California with his wife and children. In his spare time,
he enjoys surfing and travel.”
Description:
“Jack’s
seen something strange. The man standing at the teller window just made a large
cash deposit. It seemed like a simple thing - not so unusual in a credit union,
but it’s gnawing at the back of his mind.
He’s
already over his time allotment for the audit, but he can’t dismiss the
transaction, or the evil grin the man gave him. He’ll take a quick look to
satisfy his own curiosity. It’s about to be the biggest mistake he ever makes.
What he’ll
uncover is a secret – a dirty cop secret.
He’s bored
to death as an auditor, but never imaged this audit could actually kill
him…until now.”
Appraisal:
Jack
Bluth’s job is auditing credit unions to, among other things, insure they are
following the laws and regulations that govern them. Usually it’s a boring job,
but when Jack uncovers some suspicious activity, his life is suddenly at the
opposite extreme.
The overall
story isn’t bad. The boredom of Jack’s job comes through loud and clear. The
premise, that he uncovers what appears to be a money laundering operation, is a
good one, and the details of how he does this and the events that trigger his
suspicions are both credible and accurate. However, the devilish details get in
the way of the story.
A large
part of the problems are due to inadequate editing in all phases of the editing
process including proofreading. There are numerous typos and other errors.
Sometimes this is minor, as in “Todd smiled, showing of his perfect teeth.” The
reader will figure out this should be “showing off” easy enough, but it will
still throw them out of the story when encountered. Sometimes a minor problem
can cause a major change in the meaning. As in …
In his mouth was the nozzle of a
furniture shop vacuum. The duct tape was wrapped around his head and nozzle.
Around his
nozzle? What’s that? Or when he described someone as “a high profile character out
of Albuquerque, who always wore a cowboy hat, a fringy leather vest, and his
stellar record of thirteen successful suites against cities and police
departments across the United States."
He wore his
record? (The unfortunate typo ‘suites’ instead of ‘suits’ doesn’t help
matters.)
Then we’ve
got a problem of messing up “facts” within a few pages of each other or even within
a couple paragraphs. For example Jack tells a friend he has $11,000 in savings
and several pages later tells him he’s willing to invest “the full seventy-five
in my savings.” (Whether that is seventy-five hundred or thousand isn’t clear,
but is definitely inconsistent.) At one point in the story Jack found himself
without a car and having to get around by walking or riding a bus. Figuring out
the bus system was a challenge (hence the seemingly unneeded detail about the
bus schedule), but even so, these paragraphs threw me.
He could take the 33 route up to
little Tokyo, then transfer to Bus 333 to downtown, then at Main and Temple he
could walk a block, and then get on the 84 to Mt. Washington. He looked up as
he heard the sound of the bus coming up the empty street. His body seemed so
physically drained he didn’t know if he was going to be able to lift his foot
onto the bus as it opened its doors. Stumbling to the back, he lay across the
hard plastic seats. Within minutes, he was asleep.
He jolted upright. The bus was
stopped. The driver was saying something, but it didn’t register to Jack. He
looked again at his watch; 12:50 a.m. It had taken more than an hour to get
downtown.
Jack then
walks the block to get on the #84 bus, but somehow he managed to make the
transfer to Bus 333 while sleeping?
The sheer
volume of issues like these examples kept throwing me out of the story and
rather than wondering how it would end, I was just wishing it would.
Format/Typo Issues:
A large
number of proofing and copyediting issues. Some of the problems I spotted were
minor typos (‘of’ instead of ‘off’), missing or extra words, wrong verb tenses,
and sentences that made no sense or didn’t mean what was probably intended.
Rating: ** Two stars
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