Book & Baking Blog Entry 26

Crush: The Final Moments

I have to say that I wrote my last blog believing that Jacobson's Crush  really had no further hilarity to be shared.  I wrote the blog without the true badness that the ending brought to me.  How bad?  Bad bad.

I don't think that there can be a spoiler.  We have some real fun as the book winds down.  A character introduced about 1/2 to 2/3 through the book ends up being our killer.  Of course he was hitting on (successfully) our local hottie cop.  What's amazing is that the FBI agent had the entire department chasing a number of others, jumping from one theory to the next with wild abandon.  Two of these suspects were police themselves.  She totally ignores the one cop who is acting suspiciously which is telegraphed in a heavy handed way.  Can I say again that I hope that the FBI are not quite so arrogant or ineffective as Agent Vail.  And how embarrassing for the FBI mentioned in the acknowledgements.  Really, did you LIKE the character?  Seriously?

So, Vail gets a number of people killed, only finds the killer because he tries to kill the cop that he's hitting on when she gets the call with his name given to her by a microsoft tech!  (Thumbs up to Microsoft--the true hero of this tale.)   Vail follows up her fiasco of a manhunt with an embarrassingly amateurish interview.  Was it supposed to seem like she even knew what she was doing?  AND since when do you really just send one very tired cop in to question such an important suspect.  It's also funny that Napa Valley still has no idea that there was a serial killer in their midst.

So, to end this the suspect just tells our "heroine" that she just doesn't get and probably never will and he knows that this will make her crazy (which she acknowledges to herself is the truth--why not just walk away from this nut-job?), her boyfriend has disappeared, and our actual suspicious cop has been somehow secretly working with the killer because his wife and son were threatened.  THE END. 

So, no ACTUAL payoff at all.  Except hours wasted.  I wish I read faster.

Book & Baking Blog Entry 8

I just finished rereading (or actually listening on my ipod) In the Woods. I like her storytelling. It's all about the characters. I recently read The Likeness and decided to go back and reread/listen to this one.

French does a great job with a story and bringing deeply flawed characters from one novel to another. I do think that she lingers a little long in parts, but perhaps if I weren't too lazy to actually read rather than listen it wouldn't seem so drawn out. I liked In the Woods better than The Likeness. The Likeness went a little too far outside its world.

I would highly recommend both of these books. Not too graphic, in general and some good funky characters.

NOTE: I am a firm believer that an author/writer can create his/her own world where things happen that would not happen in the "real" world. I respect that it's a story and I'm paying for the fun of someone else's imagination so I don't have to do it myself.

I will often refer to this in terms of Angel World. A favorite metaphor of my husband where Charlie's Angels have perfect hair & makeup, no mud after fights in the dirt and can strip out of evening gowns that are hiding neck to toe wet suits--it's Angel World and that's the way it rolls.

This isn't a free-for-all for authors to make up anything that they want. There must be internal logic. I will point out when I believe that an author is just writing crap to write it and not really working within their own world.

Good reading.

P.S. the bear cake is the 2nd that I created for my daughter's birthday parties. She chose the eye color. In the last week--4 cake recipes and 2 sugar cookies batches. Tune in to find out how the great personalized cookie caper goes....