Author: Christopher Greyson
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!
This is yet another tedious trope novel with a main character named Jack. Yep, I know I swore off these rather vehemently, but I still have some relics in my collection which I need to read - which explains why I'm trying to get this one off the list asap. On the bright side, the way it began, this novel did make me feel quite strongly that it probably wouldn't be long before I was DNF-ing this F-ing cliché.
So what's the problem with "Jack"? Well, only that it's the single most gut-wrenchingly and nauseatingly over-fricking-used cliché character name ever where the purported hero is supposed to be some sort of an adventurer or a scalawag. Seriously - are authors so blinkered and entrenched in deep muddy ruts that they can't get their heads out of their boxed-in asses and come up with something fresh, new, different? Evidently this one can't, and Jack isn't his only problem.
Jack is a cop and we meet him as he's called to a bar around midnight in response to a 10-10, which is generally taken to mean that a fight is in progress. There is no fight, but clichéd men described as 'lumberjacks' are getting rowdy and refusing to leave unless they get a drink. Jack quickly sorts them out. As they're leaving the parking lot, a colleague arrives as back-up. She's your clichéd buddy female cop named Kendra, and her only qualities are evidently that she's athletic and beautiful - despite a scar! Nothing else matters. No one cares if she's good at her job, loyal, has integrity, is smart, is tough, can handle herself, always has your back, is sweet, is crazy, is a softy, or what the hell else. No, she's a woman so the only important thing we ever need know about her is whether she's beautiful. Not cute. Not pretty. Not average. Not good-looking, but beautiful. Got that? Embrace it and internalize it. I'm already really down on this novel at this point, but it gets worse.
Jack arrives back at his apartment - where he's having your standard trope clichéd problems, to find a young naked chick there who is the (foster) sister of his requisite dead black Iraq military BFF. Trope trope trope. And trope. This "kid" as he condescendingly refers to her, is here to report the disappearance of Jack's other BFF, Michelle, who went off to college on a scholarship, and then promptly disappeared.
When we hit chapter four and the action was suspended for a reminisce back to Iraq, I ditched this. I've never read a novel before where the boredom was interrupted to provide something even more boring! I simply wasn't interested in reading any more at that point and I have absolutely no desire to read a series about a tedious character like this in a tedious world like this. It was past time to move on a find something which can hold my interest and entertain me. I can't rate this novel as a worthy read.
