So yesterday I finally finished reading Gone by Jonathon Kellerman. It took me about a month to finish. Looking at the reviews on Amazon I'm not alone in struggling through it. I thought I just had trouble cause detective books aren't really my thing. Or because this was part of a series. Which, I did not know it was part of a series when I got it. Apparently it's towards the later end of the series. And after looking at some of the reviews apparently people seem to think the villain was obvious! lol, really? Course maybe if you read enough mystery books you get good at seeing these things, but as for me I had no clue up till they more or less spelled it out for me.
It follows this psychologist and a lot of random stuff happens in the book that I guess long-time readers of the series would understand, get, and appreciate. But for me it was random and provided nothing for the story. A little personal life stuff is ok, but not when I don't get the significance of it. Not when it seems forced like it only happened cause the author decided he needed to throw in some personal life and didn't really care about it too much. Like it was an after thought. Asides from how careless the personal life bits seemed they did not entice me to want to read the rest of the series. This guy is sleeping with two different women without caring about what he's doing! And apparently these women know each other, and don't care about what's going on; if they don't know they certainly guess, I think. I don't want my hero of the story to be like that.
The writing was annoying with way too much detail. I doubt there's many people who actually think in so much detail as was described. Things like, he'd drive up to a house, immediately recognize the style of architecture, the paint type and shade, the age of the house. Then he'd see things like "the door was open approximately 6"". No one things in terms of distance like that. "Slightly ajar" would have been perfectly acceptable and even expected! Then inside the house he'd immediately recognize the shade of paint or the style of wallpaper on the walls, the style of carpeting, the style of furniture, the knicknacks on the walls and their style and type, and he'd be able to date some of it. With one single one-second glance at the person he's going to talk to he'd instantly know what style and type of clothes and who made them, as well as the type of jewelry they're wearing if any, and what style their hair is in. Wow.
At one point things get rather confusing. He shows up at the murder scene and sees someone he knows. Of course he spends a page and a half discussing with himself the style of clothing and watch his friend is wearing. Then he goes on for another page about a memory he has of said friend. This memory is attached to another memory. So basically we have a memory of him remembering a conversation he'd had.
By the end of the book things pick up and we stop having quite as much of the useless details. They're still there just not as many and not as frequently. Either that or I got used to it.
Also apparently being an adviser on psychology to the police means he gets to ride along and know every tiny detail of the case and work it with the detective? I thought he was only brought in because he had previously had sessions with the person who was murdered! I guess both these things means he gets to play detective. I dunno, maybe that happens in RL. Just seemed kinda odd to me.
The story itself was alright actually. If it were a movie it'd be one of those ones you flick on on the tv or netflix/hulu in the middle of the day when there's nothing else better to do. One of those summer I'm Bored rot your brain movies. But you wouldn't regret seeing it. As a book it kinda fails though.
This one is going back in the donation bin for the used book sale. Unless Victor wants to read it, which I doubt.
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