The Gordonston Ladies Dog Walking Club by Duncan Whitehead

29Nov. Kindle.

DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. It is an utter waste of electrons. So - why did I read it all the way through? I think it was just a sort of horrified fascination, like people slowing down to see an accident on the highway. It couldn't really be as bad as it seemed, could it? Yes, it could. I toyed with the idea that the whole thing was some sort of elaborate hoax. One might think that events so improbable, implausible, impossible would at least be laughable, but they weren't. Everyone in the neighborhood has hired a hitman from the same mysterious international agency? Hitler survived his suicide and escaped to Argentina? They had sex eight times in four hours without chemical assistance? She had breast augmentation surgery and was displaying her new boobs a couple of hours later?

It ought to have been funny, but it was boring. Stilted language, paucity of dialog, characters that never even manage to achieve two dimensions, lengthy pedantic description of pointless activity, no continuity of plot.

He repeats his lengthy prologue word for word at the end. Possibly to stretch the mess out to an acceptable page length? I suppose his idea was to make the "mystery" who the murder victim was to be rather than who did it, but he totally failed to justify the choice of victim. Then he epi'd at seriously excessive length - even if someone actually cared about his characters by that point, they couldn't have cared that much. Of course, he had to - because he hadn't developed his supposed plot throughout. "Oh yeah, they don't know all this secret stuff ---"

I have read and commented here on a number of books which I did not like, but most of them I was willing to concede could appeal to someone whose tastes in reading were different from mine. I even read a rather poorly done book by a friend of a friend which at least had the merit of potential. With this one, I finally concluded that the glowing reviews must have been written by the author's mother. If this is the work of an inept fifteen-year-old, he needs to read a lot more before he tries to write again. And read good stuff, not formula crap. Self-publication makes it far too easy.

I sincerely hope that this rant does not encourage anyone to encourage this writer by purchasing his book to see if it can possibly be all that bad.