09-06-2008, 09:53 AM
OK. I'm not sure what the author's intent was with this book. It started out not so bad and the ending was so-so, but the middle was so pathetically amateur that it brought back some outdated phrases to my mind, like - "Gag Me!"
This book was written in the 60s and I noticed that several Gothics from that time liked to focus on capitalism vs. communism and all the intrigues related to defection on either side. This was one of them.
A young woman accompanies her boss to London, then is left stranded by him. She finds herself mixed up in this whole outrageous adventure. If this scenario were true, yes, I suppose it would feel quite frightening. Almost as if you imagined yourself somehow getting mixed up with some of these terrorist groups today and couldn't find a way to explain yourself to the Homeland Securities guys. Although considering how our heroine was taken up so easily with the good guys, I think my second scenario would definitely have been more suspenseful.
So, not such a bad start to the story. Here's where it falls apart in the middle. Our heroine is about 21 - not too immature but from what you could gather in the book, not too confident and independent either. Yet the author continues to blatantly state that the girl is so independent that after several attempts on her life, in which she is badly shaken, she continues to insist on going out on her own and gets so ruffled up when she is not allowed. That doesn't show an independent spirit to me. That's just downright stupidity. There's a fine line between courage and idiocy.
As the story unfolds, several questions pop up in the reader's mind (that is, readers who are used to reading mysteries and obvious questions spring up in solving a mystery), yet our hero, who is a special Special Agent, never even thinks of it until our heroine asks it two-thirds of the way into the story. Then he tells her how beautiful and smart she is. Duh!!! As our hero and heroine travel to Paris on what I consider a wild goose chase and answer these mundane questions, our hero's boss is sitting in London and gets all the answers.
Still, I had to finish it to see how this author managed to resolve it. I felt there were still unanswered questions and I think the author may have described several characters the same way but only identified one of them and that confused the reader.
As I've said earlier, the middle made me want to gag with the plotting, characterization and most of all, the dialogues.
I'll be nice and give it a "C".
This book was written in the 60s and I noticed that several Gothics from that time liked to focus on capitalism vs. communism and all the intrigues related to defection on either side. This was one of them.
A young woman accompanies her boss to London, then is left stranded by him. She finds herself mixed up in this whole outrageous adventure. If this scenario were true, yes, I suppose it would feel quite frightening. Almost as if you imagined yourself somehow getting mixed up with some of these terrorist groups today and couldn't find a way to explain yourself to the Homeland Securities guys. Although considering how our heroine was taken up so easily with the good guys, I think my second scenario would definitely have been more suspenseful.
So, not such a bad start to the story. Here's where it falls apart in the middle. Our heroine is about 21 - not too immature but from what you could gather in the book, not too confident and independent either. Yet the author continues to blatantly state that the girl is so independent that after several attempts on her life, in which she is badly shaken, she continues to insist on going out on her own and gets so ruffled up when she is not allowed. That doesn't show an independent spirit to me. That's just downright stupidity. There's a fine line between courage and idiocy.
As the story unfolds, several questions pop up in the reader's mind (that is, readers who are used to reading mysteries and obvious questions spring up in solving a mystery), yet our hero, who is a special Special Agent, never even thinks of it until our heroine asks it two-thirds of the way into the story. Then he tells her how beautiful and smart she is. Duh!!! As our hero and heroine travel to Paris on what I consider a wild goose chase and answer these mundane questions, our hero's boss is sitting in London and gets all the answers.
Still, I had to finish it to see how this author managed to resolve it. I felt there were still unanswered questions and I think the author may have described several characters the same way but only identified one of them and that confused the reader.
As I've said earlier, the middle made me want to gag with the plotting, characterization and most of all, the dialogues.
I'll be nice and give it a "C".