Friday, August 17, 2012

Boo Review - John Doe

John Doe - Tess Gerritsen
These short stories on the Kindle have been a bit of a mixture for me. Karin Slaughter’s recent effort was excellent where as Tess Gerritsen’s effort earlier this year was so short and silly that I didn’t even bother to review it. That is not to say it was bad, it was just a bit tongue in cheek and passed 5 minutes nicely.
This effort is slightly longer at 42 pages so I was interested in how it turned out.
The blurb:
It should have been a night to remember, but Maura Isles can’t recall a thing.Maura is at a party. A handsome man approaches. He’s charming and sophisticated. She flirts and drinks champagne. And then nothing. Total blackness. Nothing, that is, apart from these two facts: a man is dead and her address is found in his pocket . . .
The actual premise of this story is really good. It could have easily been stretched out into a longer effort and to a certain extant I think Tess might have missed a trick here. Maura Isles is currently hated by the police force and so when there is the opportunity for them to treat her as a plausible suspect in a murder enquiry I thought more time should have been dedicated to this opportunity.
Having said that, the story is nice and intriguing. The usually unflappable Maura is completely out of her comfort zone, rendered out of control by the actions of a predator. Jane demonstrates her feelings for her friend, by going all out to prove her innocence.
The problem with these short stories is that due to their length, you know that any character introduced is going to be part of the resolution as there is simply not enough pages for anything else. This makes the end somewhat predictable.
That doesn’t mean it is not a good story. Far from it, I really enjoyed this book and have decided to welcome these short visits to the characters between each book.
My rating: 7

No comments:

Post a Comment