Author: J. A. Jance Title: Edge of Evil Genre: thiller
Bad luck, it is often said, tends to come in threes. For Alison "Ali" Reynolds, that particular adage proved an understatement: her bad luck just kept on a-comin’ after the first three. Let’s talk about those three, though: first, Ali was told to clean out her desk. Well, not the actual desk where she worked – that would be the anchor desk at the local network affiliate in LA. Seems that even this foxy forty-five year old was considered a little long in the tooth for the news biz. That was one. And when Ali got home with her lonely cardboard box and her coffee mug, she found out that her best friend in the whole world "Reenie" was dead, an alleged suicide after being diagnosed with ALS. That was two. As the unemployed and unoccupied Ali headed for her parents’ Sedona home, her twenty-something son dropped the third shoe, so to speak. "I thought you knew Paul was messing around on you – everyone else does!" That made three: unemployed, dead friend, and headed for divorce – all within days.
Completely certain that suicide would never be in her friend Reenie’s (short for Irene, OK?) plans no matter what, Ali decided to trust her old newshound’s instincts and poke around a bit. Since amateur detecting couldn’t take up her whole day, she also made her blogosphere debut, sharing her thoughts in the space her son had set up called cutlooseblog.com. It didn’t take much time before the neophyte blogger found herself in hot water for counseling abused women to pull the plug and "leave the bastard." Being a clueless newbie (and an idiot), she – of course – had used her real name on her blog and provided all manner of clues as to her whereabouts, like the name of her parents’ diner in Sedona and the hours she was filling in there as a waitress. Can you say "Dumb and dumber"?
So it all came down to a race: would Ali figure out how Reenie really died (and, of course, who killed her) before a brutal abusive husband broke in and tried to kill her? Would she kill him in self defense (well, of course she would)? Would she figure out who had killed her friend and why (well, of course she would)? Guess that left only one mystery: would she do the nasty with the hunky cop? Uh-uh, I ain’t gonna tell…
Ali Reynolds' new digs: Sedona
It’s always a bummer when a pretty good writer goes bad, but that’s sure what’s happened here. On apparent hiatus from both her J P Beaumont and Joanna Brady series, J (Judith) A Jance went and slapped together the literary equivalent of direct-to-video – this stuff’s bad enough that her publisher never bothered with a hardback version. And with the modern touches like blogging and email, it’s a pretty good bet that it’s not an old unpublished manuscript Jance dug out of the back of a closet somewhere. Nope, this one is modern all the way.
How bad is Edge of Evil? It’s bad enough that when the smarmy Ali mixes it up with her stalker (it’s not a spoiler if I tell you not to read the thing, OK?), you’re almost rooting for the villain. It’s bad enough that the only reason I finished it was so that I could warn other people to stay away. It’s bad enough that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to look a Jance book in the title again. Yeah, it’s that bad.
So what makes Edge of Evil so bad? Let me think… First off, the characters are cardboard with bland stereotypes painted on them. You've got your spunky blonde emotionally abused wife with the savvy, sensitive, bright kid (from her first marriage of course). You've got your sexist, ageist network stooge and the implanted, botoxed blonde bimbo he’s tagged to replace Ali. You've got your philandering high-powered executive husband, the kind who’s so stupid he does the horizontal bop with his wife’s assistant in their own swimming pool! You've got your stereotype conservative bankers. You got your stereotype wounded-heart veteran cop. You've got your stereotype everything, in fact.
Second off, the novel reads like a tract trying to garner donations for a battered women’s shelter. Every male character (save Ali’s son, her Pop, and her sainted, dead first husband) is a pure-D turd. They’re abusive. They’re belittling. They’re cheaters. They’re murderous. Heck, they’re men – guess that about sums it up. Do women ever cheat on their husbands? Apparently not in Ali Reynolds's world…
Third, it’s not very interesting. The action is so confused by Jance’s desire to incorporate her preachments about spousal abuse that it gets ever harder to track the original question: who killed Reenie (a note – we all know Reenie was murdered because it happens in the prologue – some suspense, eh?). This one is a loser from the get-go.
Normally I’d say something about how Jance fans will want to read this if only to make certain they’ve seen everything she’s written. If, however, you’re a fan of Judith’s, take my advice and skip Edge of Evil, for if you read this muddled mess she may lose a fan.