Looking Glass Killer

 

 

 

This book was one that was pitched to me through an organization that helps self-published authors with exposure to their books. I thought that it sounded interesting and worked it into my long list of books I wanted to read. This is book II in a series, I believe.

 

The main problem that I had with this book is that in some areas it read like a college lecture in mathematics or statistics. Floyd Merrell is a retired professor and this definitely reflects that. I think that in many areas it had a great deal of promise, but outside of the long passages on mathematics, it lacked in a great deal of content in respect to character development and plot.

 

Within the book, the main character Detective Lucia and her partner are trying to find a killer who taunts Lucia and seems to have a pattern with where the victims are killed. The problem is that most of the book takes place at the police station. Lucia and her partner Mike do visit the crime scenes, but outside of that there isn't a whole lot of action. Most of the dialogue revolves around them theorizing about sociopathic tendencies. Early in the book, within the first 20 pages, Lucia is already calling the killer "brilliant" and I did not see how that was possible.

 

Perhaps if I had read the first book I would have had a better understanding of Lucia's character, but I didn't even know she was from Brazil until almost 70 pages in. Even now as I write this, I am not certain that I could tell anyone who asked me much about any of the characters in the book with any specific detail. I think that I would have liked a little more detail and character development.

 

Some of the other issues were the constant references to Lewis Carroll, a tremendous amount of cliché phrases, and a lack of connecting the killer with Lucia. I found myself skipping through passages due to all of the mathematical explanations. I really feel that if some of that was cut out, more character development had been put in, and a few close call scenes between Lucia and the killer were created for more drama or climax that this would have been an amazing book.

 

Overall, I think that this book was okay. My main piece of advice for any self-publishing author is to get a good copy editor to help you out with issues in terms of grammar and storyline. If Merrell had done that and gotten some non-academic beta readers, some the issue mentioned above may have been resolved before publishing. It was a really good idea, just poorly executed.

 

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

 

I was given a copy of the book by the author through Bostick Com.; I was not paid to do this review.