Maggie F. (MoonShadow) - , reviewed on 1/20/2017 + 18 more book reviews

I understand that other books P. L Gaus has written are supposed to be riveting - but this is not one. I found this book extremely hard to slog through, and that's an understatement. I couldn't recommend this book to my own worst enemy.

The story has so many flaws I wouldn't know where to begin enumerating them. The characters are so poorly developed you couldn't care less who the murderer is and whether or not he or she is brought to justice. Three-quarters of the book is filler, with long, drawn-out conversations that don't add anything, with folks putting on and taking off their coats ad nauseum, and with the weather and snow outside being mentioned to the point of monotony. Even minute descriptions of coffee cups don't escape this author's keen eye! Nothing is learned about the Amish or their way of life. It is never explained how, if the victim was long dead BEFORE she got bashed in the head, where all the blood that was on Martha's apron came from. The professor is told to stop investigating the murder but he keeps on doing it anyway and the sheriff, who casually goes away to Chicago (with the coroner, no less, but then again, EVERYONE knows EVERYONE intimately in this town, especially the murder victim, who slept with just about EVERY male in the book), has the mystery solved for him in his absence -- and by the professor no less! How tidy. The author adds pieces of one person's past here, and then starts up a romance there, and then brings in more useless filler to where you're left wondering why you even started reading this sad waste-of-a-tree in the first place. And if I could add a note to the author I'd like him to know that people don't talk like this:

"Hi Dick!"
"How are you, Mike?"
"I'm good, Dick. What's new?"
"Nothing much, Mike. How about you?"
"Oh, my dog's sick, Dick."
"Sorry to hear that, Mike."
"Yeah, Dick, but he'll pull through."
"Gee, Mike, that's good to hear."
"Yeah, Dick, he's a trooper."
"Yeah, old Fido's a trooper, Mike."
"Say, Dick, how's your wife?"
"I don't know, Mike, I've been too busy with the dog."
"Well, have a good day, Dick."
"You, too, Mike. Say hi to your wife, Mike. Goodbye, Mike."


(These are my words, but you get the gist).

It's so obvious all the rave reviews about this piece of trash on Amazon are by the author's friends. Do yourself a favor and read James Patterson. In comparison to Gaus, Patterson's pulp fiction books seem like Pulitzer Prize winners.

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