Rating: 3/5
Review:
So-so
I was rather underwhelmed by Twisted. I had heard that Thirteen was
very good, so I thought I’d try this one, but it seemed pretty
run-of-the-mill stuff to me. The plot is based around a reclusive,
mysterious author, JT LeBeau, whose books make millions but whose
life seems to be involved with a number of murders. To say more
would be a significant spoiler.
The thing is, the
book is constructed entirely so that there can be “Twists”. (And
just in case we don’t admire them sufficiently we’re even told by
a character how very difficult this is.) I am prepared to suspend
disbelief, sometimes from a considerable height for a really good
book, but I found a lot of Twisted rather silly and a bit dull. The
opening hundred pages or so are padded with masses of tedious and
largely irrelevant detail about unconvincing characters’ lives,
thoughts and so on, to the extent that I kept suspecting that the
author was paid by the word, thinking “get on with it!” and
skimming judiciously. I didn’t miss anything important. When
things did begin to happen, nothing was much of a surprise and there
are some ridiculous coincidences and some utter implausibilities: for
example, a character who is obsessed with concealing his true
background isn’t really sure where he left a vital document which
may or may not have been stolen. Really? Later, another similarly
obsessed character leaves his laptop alone with someone else and
available to be read, to the extent that it doesn’t even require a
password to bring it out of sleep mode. Huh? Even mine does that.
And so on.
It’s well enough
written to be readable, but the knowledge that we’re always being
set up for the next Twist made it unengaging for me, and that
knowledge meant that I saw several of the Twists coming. The ending
is absurdly silly and I wasn’t all that sorry to finish it. This
might be OK for a brain-off beach read or the like, but nothing more.
(My thanks to Orion
for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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