Book & Baking Blog Entry 20

BIG SPOILER ALERT on GHOST SHADOW.

Well, you never know what you're going to like and what you're not going to like.  That's abundantly clear when sifting through the books on my iPod and kindle.  The beauty of the kindle, as noted again and again, is that Amazon does offer books for free. You can try authors, usually not good, for free and then they hope that you'll purchase more.

Audible is a great service.  I've had it for at least 5 years and I love it.  I love having audio books when driving, riding my bike, and doing housework (really if anything can make housework better...)  My difficulty is that, since I have a subscription I will purchase books that I may or may not like.  Sometimes it's a little like roulette (Russian style.)  Sometimes it's the narrator--authors, by the way, should NEVER narrate their own books.  Sometimes it's the story.  And sometimes it's both.

I've learned to listen to samples so that I don't get the narrator from hell any longer.  The stories are a bit more difficult to predict.  I j ust finished Ghost Shadow by Heather Graham.   Now Graham is known for trite romances, at lea st that's how I know her.  She has had a few (and far between) mysteries.  And so I spent my monthly credit on Ghost Shadow.

Ghost Shadow was not the worst book that I ever read/listened to.  There are books that I have just given up on.  This had a basic plot where the heroine is gorgeous, brilliant, and incredible business woman, and the friendliest little chikadee in Key West.  She sees ghosts.  She never mentions this to anyone because  her brother warned her, when she was 6, that people would think that she was crazy. We hear this story at least 3 times in the course of the story.  So, of course, she never mentioned it again and just went on with her life.  OK.  It sounds a little incredible to me.  If she can see ghosts can't someone else?  Anyone else?  PUHLEEZE. 

The killer killed 10 years prior to our current story and completely and ineffectually tried to frame the trampy dead girl's ex-fiancee.  Well, now, the ex-fiancee has returned and he and our heroine fall in love (lust, have sex--but we're supposed to believe love.)  So the killer decides he has to kill the heroine.  But first, a couple of practices this time.

Oh, and the MacGuffin is that, initially our heroine, our karaoke business woman, wants to purchase the hero's family's museum where the ex-fiance had been posed after her murder. 

The entire plot is so contrived that the mystery is  why bother with the faux attempt at original prose.

REALLY SUPER SPOILER ALERT
Why did they start with a focus on reopening the museum?
Why really did the killer kill the extra people?
Frankly, why would a killer really try to murdera bunch of people to frame a guy just because the guy's great great great great great grandfather made certain that the killer's great great great great grandfather was hanged for a crime that he committed?  Seriously, this was our denoument!

THIS was why this guy randomly decides to kill.  And why choose that ONE guy out of all the huge number of family that our hero purportedly has.  Why not kill our hero directly.

And you'd think that the chief of police could provide a better frame.

Oh yeah.  

Despite the flaws, I listened to the entire book.  And as I've said before, it's probably better than anything that I could write.

Happy Reading!