Apparently, Nothing Exceeds Like Excess
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Author: Brian Freeman
Title: Stalked Genre: mystery Doesn't make any difference what it is, the sages say, you can always have too much of a good thing. Too much food? Fat. Too much water? Drown. You get the picture. Still, it's kind of interesting to see just what others consider "too much" of something. I think I can give you an example when it comes to mystery novels: Brian Freeman's latest in the John Stride series, Stalked. Just as he did in his two previous novels, Immoral and Stripped, Freeman's assembled a kitchen sink plot, tossing in every item in his writer's bag of tricks. The result? Let's just say that Freeman may have potential, but he needs a firmer hand in the editing department. Come with me and see what I mean... With his friend and fellow homicide detective a suspect in the murder of her husband, Lt. John Stride is required to keep his nose out of the investigation. Of course he can't: Maggie is, after all, his former partner; and that's ignoring for the nonce the long-ignored physical attraction between them. Fortunately, he has the disappearance of a troubled young woman to keep him occupied - except that, wonder of wonders, Tangerine "Tanjy" Powell might have been romantically linked to Maggie's late husband. Looks like Stride has found a back door into the murder investigation after all... Meanwhile, Stride's live-in lover, former Las Vegas homicide cop Serena Dial, has picked up a new job for her PI business. She's hired by Stride's political arch-enemy to deliver a wad of cash to a blackmailer. It's weird, though - the blackmailer specifically requested Serena as go-between, which makes her a little itchy- especially since she's had a feeling of being watched for the last few days. Since we already know that a prison escapee from Alabama has a score to settle with Serena, it's a safe bet someone new in town has it in for her - but who? And why? And what's with the usherette from the big theater in the Twin Cities, anyway, huh? What's her problem? Mystery novels being mystery novels (and Freeman being Freeman), we can rest assured that everything will eventually be tied up in a nice neat bow, though several of the threads in that bow will be twisted to within an inch of their lives. Oh, and there'll also be lots... and lots... of sex. It isn't particularly unusual for a mystery writer to knit together several seemingly unrelated threads in the last chapter of a novel. The element of surprise apparently requires it for certain writers, though some seem to be able to carry it off better than others. There's a cardinal rule, however: a writer must insert the crucial clue somewhere in the book, so that readers have a chance, however faint, of solving the mystery themselves. The more subtly the better, of course. In Stalked, however, Freeman violates this cardinal rule - not once, but twice. You see, there are not one but two intertwined mysteries, which not only confuses Freeman's characters but his readers as well (and, I suspect, his editor). Of course, his "subtle" clue about the identity of one suspect is as subtle as a chain saw in a china shoppe: the multiple repetitions of the clue are a bright red (or in this case, purple) flag. On the other hand, the identity of the titular stalker, the one with eyes only for Serena, comes from so far out in left field that it might as well be in a different ball park. Freeman's obvious desire to write pulse-pounding thrill-a-minute tales leads to a novel that seems the literary equivalent of a movie directed by the special effects coordinator. Almost every scene is calculated to raise some kind of reaction. Freeman can't have someone stumble on a body without turning it into a couple of high-schoolers sneaking off to do the nasty - graphically, I might add. He finds it necessary to make every woman who encounters his hero eager to jump Stride's manly bones, too. Between the adolescent fascination with near pornographic sex scenes and the breakneck speed of the graphic violence, this is not a series for the faint of heart. It's not a series for the careful reader, either: there are errors in continuity, timeline, and sometimes common sense. Within a few pages, we find a thirty-something character who stayed in the US instead of returning to China after college because of the student fallout from Tiananmen Square (that was nineteen years ago, right? Could've been Doogie Howser, I guess...) and another character who's been in a maximum security prison for at least ten years, but somehow knows how to highjack WiFi signals upon his escape from prison. Ummmm, yeah, sure: those are things an editor is supposed to catch... Marred by trying too hard and rather too much prurience, Stalked is the third Freeman novel in a row that just doesn't quite cut the mustard. all content copyright © 2014 by scmrak
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