Leslie Glass

Judging by this novel, Leslie Glass is a very inconsistent writer:

* Sometimes, her characterization is bad; other times it is merely average.

* Most of the time, the accuracy and realism of technical matters is awful (such as when all martial arts got called karate, the epitome of skill was represented by "the one-punch kill", and breaking bricks was the important demonstration of, and training method for, "the one-punch kill"); other times it is slightly above average (such as when most of a page was some kind of stream-of-consciousness litany of random facts about martial arts, possibly lifted from a Wikipedia page, presented as dialog in a telephone conversation).

* Sometimes, the narrative almost completely lacked any descriptive material; other times, it focused on pointless minutia (at times showing rather questionable taste), and at those latter times it tended to run in streaks such as the section of the book where all suits were tweed and at least partly black (the other part, when there was another color at all, was pink).

The characters tended to be somewhat mean-spirited, including the supposed good guys, and I found that rather off-putting.

The protagonist's mother was a caricature, and a bit of a stereotype.

The protagonist and her fiance/co-worker/boss damned near ruin the lives of anyone who is close to the case before finally settling on the correct perpetrator, and nobody (including the author) seems to think there is anything wrong with that.

The climax was abrupt and felt a bit hollow, with the mystery-accomplice character not so much being a mystery as a cardboard cutout non-person.

I actually disliked it, but not quite enough to give it the lowest possible rating. I reserve that for the worst books -- not those that are merely bad, like A Killing Gift… (més)