Patti S. (Pattakins) reviewed on 3/11/2013 + 365 more book reviews

I love Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta books, so I bought this thinking it would be just as good. I'm glad it was a "book on tape"...otherwise I never would have finished it. This was supposed to be her attempt at dark humor, but I did not find it so. It was just plain bad! The plot is thin, the characters washed out at best and horribly stereo-typed at worst. Ms. Cornwell seemed unable to decide if she wanted to write humor, a mystery, horror or fantasy and to be honest, she didn't do a very good job at any of the genres judging by this book. Ms. Hammer comes across as feeble, whiny and incompetent; the whole Andy Brazil as 'Trooper Truth' was patently ridiculous; a child could have guessed who it was from the get go. And the treatment of the Tangier Islanders was dreadful. Throughout the book I kept thinking....oh come on...how could everyone NOT know who Trooper Truth was?

So, basically this was about Chaos breaking loose when the governor of Virginia orders that speed traps be painted on all streets and highways, warning that speeders will be caught by monitoring aircraft flying overhead. But the eccentric Isle of Tangier, fourteen miles off the coast of Virginia in the Chesapeake Bay, responds by declaring war on its own state. Judy Hammer, newly installed as the superintendent of the Virginia State Police, and Andy Brazil, a state trooper and Hammer's right hand and confidant (Who is also Trooper Truth), trying to bring calm to Virginia and Tangier Island. The governer is being poisoned by his right hand man, who is also doing all kinds of illegal things and is actually a pirate himself. Trooper Truth figures things out from the beginning, but it is never written HOW he knows these things. But he reveals certain things about pirates, etc. in his online essays. Of course, EVERYONE is hooked on his Trooper Truth essays, so it causes lots of commotion.

I am all for humor in a book, but that never really comes through here. It just reads as confusing throughout and the the characters never mesh.

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