Here is another without a Publisher icon we have www.booksurge.com which we are told is soon to become CreateSpace. Ah well...
The premise for this story is definitely intriguing. It has all the great elements of a murder mystery including a grusome without being graphic murder scene without an adorable amatuer sleuth who is actually a software/computer geek. He is adorable because he has quirks and is unsure of himself beside the "girl next door" real sleuth who works for ???
However...
After asking some questions of my own while reading this novel, I turn the page and voila! the questions I asked are there in black and white. Wonderful! They are on the right track, I smile and keep reading... and reading... and reading. After a reasonable amount of time, I flip over about 50 pages and Lo! there are the same questions all over again with no progress at all. Why have the 50 pages if there is no progress? There really isn't an answer for this hypothetical question. It is one of those things that make you go... HMMMM, why am I reading this?
This would be a great novel if it were trimed about 20,000 words. It would be a super made for TV movie. I wouldn't mind spending a couple of hours watching this, but please... let's make some progress if I'm going to spend several evenings before I sleep on a novel.
One character (the protag) is very well developed. You know how he will react in any given situation. He's a great guy. He's a geek. He's adorable. I wouldn't change a thing about him. And the villian, is enormously a villian even incognito, although you can figure out who he is within a few pages. The problem is there is no real interplay between the two. There is no tension buildup. There is nothing really to make you want to hate him or, on the flip side, like him. He's just some guy inserted in the story line to literally be the villian.
I just read that last line and I wonder at myself. Have I read so much drival in the past several years that I've become iron-skinned? Do I expect too much? Then I think of some of the greatest novels I've read in the past 50 years and think, "No."
If someone is going to spend hard-earned money on a story, then why isn't it the greatest story that can be told? Why? if stories like Pride and Prejudice and Shakespear's plays, and The Three Musketeer's, The Man in the Iron Mask, Prisoner of Zenda et al are told and retold and printed and reprinted? it is because really good storytelling cannot be disguised.
It is good storytelling that we find hard to come by in these days and times. That is because it is too easy to turn on the TV and zone-out.
A good story has 3-dimensional characters. It has a good build up. It has good tension among the characters. It has staying power down through the ages.
This story has 1 3-D character. It has excellent build up. It has passable tension in the love angle but it does not have staying power. I do not think this story is worth the money.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Bright yellow cables against a blue shirt? Carl never would have approved of that color combination. Why was his face so white? His eyes should be closed, not open. Why hadn’t one of the security guards seen this and reported it to the police? The lights were off, the cameras were useless in the dark.Of course, the cables wrapped around Carl’s neck explained why the server wasn’t working. Loss of carrier.
Jess Wirth lives a dreary life. He spends most of his time crammed inside a cubicle, toiling as a network engineer and stewing over the details of his ugly divorce. But when he finds his co-worker dead in the basement of their office, Jess’s life takes a surprising—and unpleasant—turn.
The police quickly declare the death a suicide, but Jess isn’t so sure. Not long after he begins digging into the victim’s work, another co-worker turns up dead, convincing him once and for all that something sinister is brewing behind the cubicle walls.
His investigation leads him to a mysterious woman name Leah, who pushes him to entrust her with the information he’s collected about his dead colleagues. Wary of Leah’s motives yet inexorably drawn to her, Jess keeps her at arm’s length...until an attempt is made on both their lives. Realizing they are close on the trail of a dangerous criminal, the pair race to expose a data theft ring before they become the killer’s next victims.
If you would like to read the first chapter of Loss Of Carrier, go HERE
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