Those Blasted Amazon Reviews

When writers talk among themselves, where those "others" -- readers -- can't overhear or see their listserv posts, many voice complaints about Amazon reader reviews.

Those reviews have become vital to sales (or so we believe). If a book racks up at least 100 reviews, Amazon gives it greater prominence. It will show up more often on readers' screens as a recommended book, or on a list of results when a reader searches for titles within a genre. And, of course, we all believe that four and five star reviews impress both Amazon's soulless computer programs and potential buyers.

Many writers rant and rave when someone posts a one star "review" that says only, "This book is filled with bad grammar. Skip it." Or a review that pulls out a single sentence or paragraph as proof that the books is virtually unreadable. They may conclude that this stranger couldn't possibly have read the book, at least not much of it, and has posted such a "review" for malicious reasons that defy understanding.

I tend to think all this angst is a waste of energy and time.

Let me tell you about a thriller I've just finished in audiobook format, and explain why, as a writer, I could be picky and negative about it but instead am inclined to admire it. Hang in here with me, and I promise this will be relevant to the Amazon review issue. The book was written by an internationally bestselling author, someone whose novels instantly shoot to the top tier of the bestseller lists as soon as they're released in hardcover. I'd never read anything of his before, and I was curious about the reason for his success.

I laughed out loud when I heard this sentence: "[She] closed her eyes and looked down."

Now, I could make fun of a writer who thinks a person can look anywhere while her eyes are closed, and I could certainly ask why an editor didn't catch a glaring error. I could also point out several equally laughable sentences. But, to tell you the truth, the book was entertaining -- shallow, yes, and no great work of art, but thoroughly entertaining, with great narrative drive, an intriguing premise, and plenty of those twists and turns we love in thrillers. It was exactly what I needed to take my mind off a personal problem that was driving me batty. What more can you ask a thriller writer to do for you? I'm not going to condemn the novel because a few sentences were poorly phrased. But a lot of writers, I must say, would delight in using those sentences as examples of the "junk" that readers seem to prefer.

So why should writers be surprised and annoyed when readers pick out one or two flaws in our books and condemn the books as a whole because they aren't perfect? We do it ourselves, to other writers. I won't get into the motives behind this. But we do it, undeniably. When readers who are not professional reviewers cite bad grammar and awkward sentences, I believe they're grasping for some concrete reason to explain why they didn't enjoy the book. If the grammar were perfect and the writing flowed smoothly, they probably still wouldn't like it. And that's their right.

Maybe some people are weird enough to post negative comments about books they haven't read. But I can't assume that a negative review of one of my books must have come from someone who didn't read it. I accept that not everyone will love everything I write. After all, I don't love everything I read.

Speaking only for myself: If a book is, on the whole, badly written AND boring, or well-written BUT boring, that's one thing. I usually just stop reading. I give up on a huge number of books (including books by writers I know and like) because life is seeming, these days, increasingly short, and I don't have the time to waste. But if a novel has flaws -- what book doesn't? -- yet still holds my interest and entertains me all the way to the end, then I count that book as a success. If it's a bestseller, I say it deserves to be one.

I don't normally read Amazon reviews. They don't influence my book-buying in the least. I haven't looked at reviews of my own six novels in so long that I have no idea how many have been posted or whether most are favorable or not. I obsessed about such things when I began publishing. I don't anymore, and I feel better for having cut this one source of stress out of my life (although plenty of others remain).

Writers can't control readers' reactions to our books. We can't control what strangers say or post online about our books. Tearing our hair out over one or two nonsensical Amazon reviews seems pointless to me.

Other writers, of course, may (and do) have a different view.

Sole Survivors

Serial killers aren’t in the habit of letting their victims survive, and when someone—usually a woman—does escape alive, the trauma is likely to leave deep, lasting scars. Two popular thriller writers recently published novels featuring sole survivors coping with the aftereffects of their experiences.

Cold Cold Heart

Tami Hoag
Hardcover, 368 pages

Dutton Adult, January 13, 2015

ISBN-10: 0525954546

ISBN-13: 978-0525954545

Dana Nolan, a TV reporter in her twenties, escaped from a notorious serial murderer by killing him before he could kill her. But she is left with physical wounds that have destroyed her beauty and a head injury that scrambles her memory, robs her of the ability to speak coherently, and makes her dependent on her mother and stepfather. Tormented by flashbacks and nightmares, filled with rage at her own helplessness, Dana has little hope for her future. She can’t clearly recall her ordeal or the man who brutalized her, but the police push her to try, while her hovering mother wants to enclose her in a protective bubble.

Leaving the rehab facility after a long stay, Dana has no choice but to move back to her hometown and the house she grew up in. Instead of finding the peace and quiet she needs to heal, she discovers that her abduction has reignited interest in the disappearance of her best friend, Casey Grant, the summer after their high school graduation. When she encounters Casey’s ex-boyfriend, John Villante, she blurts, “You killed my best friend.” John, a Middle East war veteran so crippled by post-traumatic stress disorder that he’s reduced to delivering pizzas for a living and occupying his boyhood room in his despicable father’s house, has a lot in common with Dana, but they see each other as enemies. Tim Carver, Dana’s high school boyfriend and an officer on the local police force, makes sure John remains under the shadow of suspicion not only for Casey’s disappearance and probable murder, but also for any other crime that occurs in town. When her therapist advises Dana to find a “project” to give her days a purpose, she passes up harmless, enjoyable occupations and chooses instead to find out what happened to Casey. Driven to learn the truth even as she struggles with her own handicaps, Dana puts her life in danger again to uncover explosive secrets beneath the surface of small town life.

The mystery of what happened to Casey is slow to get started, and readers never get to know the long-gone girl well enough to care about her. Avid mystery fans may spot Casey’s killer before the book’s climactic scenes. But Cold Cold Heart is nevertheless a gripping novel because it immerses readers in the emotional turmoil of two people suffering from different forms of PTSD. Although neither Dana nor John is always likable, it’s impossible to be unmoved by Hoag’s depiction of their struggles to find solid footing in a world that seems to shift constantly beneath their feet. In an afterword, Hoag describes the relatively mild but never-ending consequences of a head injury she suffered as a child and challenges readers to learn more about PTSD, a condition that affects far more people than we may realize.

  

Die Again

Tess Gerritsen

Hardcover, 352 pages

Ballantine Books, December 30, 2014

ISBN-10: 0345543858

ISBN-13: 978-0345543851

I’ve read every Rizzoli and Isles novel Gerritsen has published, and I found this one different from the others, disappointing in some respects, but ultimately enjoyable.

About a third of the book is set in the past and narrated by Millie Jacobson, a young woman who was on safari in a remote part of Botswana several years ago when the guide started killing the tourists one by one. Alternating with Millie’s unfolding story are chapters set in present-day Boston, where homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles are investigating the grisly murder of big-game hunter and taxidermist Leon Gott. The victim, who was putting his taxidermy skills to work on a rare leopard that died at a local zoo, bears the claw marks of a big cat and has been gutted and hung like a hunter’s kill. After discovering that Gott’s son disappeared in Botswana, Rizzoli and Isles wonder if the unsolved safari homicides might be connected to the Boston murder. Eventually Jane Rizzoli and her husband, FBI agent Gabriel Dean, travel to Africa to question the sole survivor of the safari massacre, who lives in fear that the killer will come back for her one day.

The scenes set in Africa are riveting as they detail the safari group’s inexorable slide into chaos and terror. The Boston scenes with Rizzoli and Isles are less compelling. The grind of an investigation, interrupted by personal scenes with Rizzoli’s parents, can’t compete with the chills of people trying to stay alive in the African bush while a killer stalks them as if they’re prey animals. (Rizzoli’s parents, at this stage, would be tiresome in any story. Why would her mother, after building a happy, fulfilling new life on her own, make the stupid decision she does?) The usual spark seems to be missing from the odd couple friendship of Rizzoli and Isles.

On the strength of the African scenes, though, I recommend Die Again. Fans of the series will not want to miss it.

Favorite Fiction Reads of 2014

My fiction reading is all over the place, from a sampling of YA to hard, dark, bloody thrillers. What surprises me every year, when I look at my list of books I’ve read or listened to on audio, is how few of them made a strong impression on me. Those that linger in my mind are worthy of places on my year’s-best-reads list. Not all these titles were published in 2014, but that’s when I read them.  Because I can't always say I enjoyed one book more than another, I've divided most into categories, but those labeled unforgettable are exactly that.

UNFORGETTABLE 

The Paying Guests by Sara Waters

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

Florence Gordon by Brian Morton

The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE

The Cry by Helen Fitzgerald

The Lie of You by Jane Lythell

Don’t Stand So Close by Luana Lewis

Until You’re Mine by Samantha Hayes

In the Blood by Lisa Unger

LATEST FROM FAVORITE WRITERS

Die Again by Tess Gerritsen

The Tilted World by Tom Franklin and Beth A. Fennelly

The Secret Place by Tana French

Designated Daughters by Margaret Maron

To Dwell in Darkness by Deborah Crombie

FICTION WITH CRIME IN IT

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

Frog Music by Emma Donoghue

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

After I’m Gone by Laura Lippman

MYSTERY/SUSPENSE/THRILLER

The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood

Someone Else’s Skin by Sarah Hilary

The Farm by Tom Rob Smith

Assault with a Deadly Lie by Lev Raphael

VARIOUS FICTION

 The Good Children by Kate Wilhelm

Everything I Never Told You by Christine Ng

Our Lady of the Forest by David Guterson

Rooms by Lauren Oliver

Mercy Snow by Tiffany Baker

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
The Stone Diaries by Margaret Atwood

Review: Show Me the Gold

Show Me the Gold

By Carolyn Mulford

Hardcover, 304 pages

Five Star (December 17, 2014)

ISBN-10: 1432829904

ISBN-13: 978-1432829902

Carolyn Mulford’s “Show Me” mysteries — set in Missouri, the “show me” state — follow wounded ex-CIA agent Phoenix Smith to her small hometown of Laycock, where she hopes to build a new, safer life but can’t seem to stay out of the line of fire. The bad guys may not be the Eastern European big leaguers she dealt with as a spy, but their bullets are equally lethal.

In the third series entry (following Show Me the Murder and Show Me the Deadly Deer) Phoenix rides along when her old friend, Acting Sheriff Annalynn Keyser, responds to an urgent request for help in a neighboring county, where four bank robbers have been spotted at an abandoned farmhouse. The women get involved in a deadly shootout with two of the men, but the other two escape, apparently with the stolen gold. Phoenix’s endearing dog, a K9 Corps dropout named Achilles, is hopeless at tracking the escapees, but he saves his owner and the law enforcement officers at the scene when he sniffs explosives and warns them away from the booby-trapped house.

The FBI takes over the investigation, and agents sense that Phoenix isn’t what or who she seems. She can’t reveal her former double life as a covert operative. On the record, she’s merely a consultant for her former employer, a venture capital firm, and her primary personal interest is establishing a foundation to help the families of crime victims. The FBI tags her as a thief who made off with the missing gold. Phoenix’s efforts to prove her innocence and find the missing thieves who have the gold lead her into further danger.

The plot has enough twists, turns, and blind alleys to keep readers turning pages, but the greatest strength of Carolyn Mulford’s writing is her gift for creating likable characters with the kinds of flaws that make us all human. Annalynn is still grieving for her husband, the former sheriff, whose death in scandalous circumstances provided the plot for Show Me the Murder, and doubts that she has what it takes to head up local law enforcement. Phoenix herself misses her CIA adventures and wonders if she can ever resign herself to smalltown life again: “I’d recovered—almost—from my wound and accepted—almost—the loss of my old double life. I hadn’t regained the self-confidence and daring that had enabled me to succeed as a covert operative and as an executive of a venture capital firm. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have [a goal].” Watching this conflicted woman come to terms with her changed circumstances and find a new purpose is a reason in itself to read Mulford’s books.
   
The small town setting of Show Me the Gold has plenty of the crime and secrets that go into engaging mysteries. Highly recommended for readers who love character-driven stories with realistic small town settings.

The author provided an advance copy of Show Me the Gold in exchange for an honest review.