Our theme yesterday and today is Lehigh Valley authors. I have many Lehigh Valley authors on my TBR pile. Who’s on yours? I picked up some Echo City Capers Jr. titles and Katherine Ramsland’s debut thriller fiction novel at a recent visit to the Lafayette College Store based on recommendations from our own Darrell Parry, who steers the trade books section at the college.
I finished I Scream Man: A Nut Cracker Investigation this week. It was impeccably written with solid characters, compelling action and just enough weird to keep me interested. It’s a thick novel— the trade paperback has more than 300 pages.
And while Katherine fulfilled every one of my expectations as a reader, and as someone who once sat in a critique group with her and I’ve admired her ever since, I realized that I don’t like the traditional first person detective thriller.
I happily gave the book four stars on Goodreads and I look forward to additional volumes, but when I compare this to Hush Little Baby by Rachael Herron, I realize I like books where I’m thrown into the experience of the victim, not the investigator. And Katherine, in I Scream Man, does an amazing job of giving the investigator (Annie) high stakes: she faces her phobias, must save her daughter, and has to figure out if her ex-husband is a good guy or one of the villains. Katherine did everything she needed to do, and she did it with mastery.
I just didn’t feel myself invested in Annie’s outcome. Which surprised me. But a great book. Do you have a book you read that you know was well done, but it just didn’t satisfy the core of your readers’ soul? Tell me at angel@parisianohoenix.com.
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