Past Sins

1.5Sorrowful stars
In Greek mythology Sirens were beautiful creatures who lured sailors with their song only to shipwreck their vessels. The blurb and cover of this book were that call for me. Sadly the results were the same for me. I crashed hard. cue sad face

I seem to be on a collision course with bad stuff lately, however there's no way forward but trying new writers. The dreaded First Person Present Tense, along with the writer/editor's weird fixation on breaking each sentence into a new paragraph were my first clues that things weren't going to go well.

Here's an example:
I turn to my former partner Officer Cory Ryan, twenty-nine, bisexual, dark-skinned and a Patriot's fan, writing furiously in his notebook ten feet from me in the fare corner. A falling out between us last year led us to working with different partners on separate cases. I blame Ryan's mood swings and lack of patience and professionalism, and the way he handles cases, walking away from interviews and not speaking to me for days later. Six years separate us, and I miss the time we spent together, drinking beer and watching college and professional football games at a bar after work. I stop thinking about our past, as a booming crash of thunder shifts my position, and I jump, startled, and let out a soft yelp.

As you can surmise, a whole book like this can be a chore, and as you saw there's boatloads of infodump which ultimately bring nothing to the story. This could be overcome if it weren't for the MC, Jack Ballinger, weren't pretty much incompetent as a Police Officer, scared of his own shadow (see yelping above), and not particularly likable, if you go by how he treats his bedmate, or how he describes and refers to others.

The coup de grâs of course is police procedural plot written by someone who perhaps has gotten their ideas from bad tv cop shows. To say there's zero verisimilitude to actual police work or cases would be kind. I won't belabor the whole plot, preposterous in the sequence of events, resolution, and Jack's role in it. Also for those still reading, this isn't really a romance. I can't recommend this.

Sorry.