Often, one of the worst things a new writer can do is ask a new neighbor, who has
never written a book review, to read and review one of the writer's stories. This
is like asking a person who has never baited a fish hook, to describe
their favorite catfish bait.
Unfortunately, I got the crazy idea that
since said neighbor enjoyed drinking the beer I took him on move-in day,
he'd devour my latest novel with a similar zeal. The key words here are new neighbor. My other long time neighbors are well
aware of my shortcomings in fiction writing, which is why I no longer ask them to write book reviews or take beer to them.
Of course my new neighbor, Harvey, readily agreed to read my story. The case of Bud Lite hanging from my right hand may have helped seal the deal. Two days later I realized things had not gone as well as I had hoped.
Harvey's book review:
This book review is written without bias and had nothing to do with the author giving a case of beer to me for my trouble. I understand that Amazon requires this type disclaimer for book reviews.
Anyway, here is my review of Jack LaBloom's romantic suspense novel, ON THE RUN TWENTY WAYS FROM SUNDAY.
This
story is about a man named Jack Sandstone and a woman named Janet Oliver. There is a
warrant out for Jack's arrest. The opening scene gives no indication if the
warrant is for unpaid parking tickets or capital murder. I assumed the
worst. Otherwise, I would have quit reading right then and there. There
is nothing exciting about a guy on the run for unpaid parking tickets.
Janet,
bless her heart, drives an old beat-up car and is using a credit card
she stole from her ex-boyfriend, Bruce, who is also referred to as snake man. Before leaving town to get away from Bruce, Janet charged a
few clothes, on the stolen credit card, at a women's petite apparel shop
located on the corner of Main and Twenty-eighth street. Two days later,
she purchases a burger twelve hundred hundred miles away in another
state. No wonder she has to shop for clothes in a store for petite
women. If she is only eats one burger every two days, it's a miracle she
is alive. Anyway, she is keeping to the back roads, heading west.
While
she is driving, she calls her best friend, Cissy Haperton and tells
her, if anyone asks where she is to tell them she is still in New York
City. From the conversation, I learn that Janet's choices in men, so
far, has verged somewhere between bad and awful. She has it in her head
the good men must live out west. Therefore, her plan is to drive to California
for a fresh start, get far away from snake man, and find her a mister right.
Bruce,
the bad guy in this story, has a tattoo of a rattlesnake that goes
across his back and down both arms. The rattlers are shown on the back
of his left hand and the head of the snake is depicted on the back of
his right hand. Snake man is tracking Janet by monitoring her purchases
on his credit card.
Well, as luck would have it, Jack and Janet
both end up at the same gasoline station located way off
the main highway somewhere way out in west Texas. The reader does not
know this until a dust cloud that was formed around the gas pumps
clears, after Janet pulls her car to a stop in front of the pump. That
is when the reader gets a glimpse of Jack's truck and a sign beside it
that reads Last Gasoline Station For a 150 Miles.
Jack
steps into the store to buy a bag of peanuts. I don't know why he was
only buying peanuts. That was not explained in the story. My first
thought was why not also buy gas while you're at the only gas station
around for the next hundred and fifty miles?
Jack bumps into
Janet near the checkout counter. She turns and glares at him. He
immediately apologizes and gazes at her. Based on a long descriptive
paragraph about facial expressions, the two obviously have an instant
attraction for each other. Her unpleasant looking gritted teeth
changes into a smile, which quickly reverts to a
frown, after Jack tells her that her car has a flat tire. She gets upset
and appears frightened. She assumes Bruce has found her car, slashed
her tire, and is waiting for her to come outside. Finally, on page six,
there is some suspense.
False alarm, turns out Janet just ran
over a nail. The short-on-front-teeth old coot who owns the gas station
tells Jack and Janet he had a new roof put on the store last month, and
the boneheads, who did the work, spilled a box of roofing nails in the
driveway. Due to having a bad back, he has not been able to bend over to
pick up all of the nails. This explanation made sense to me, because I
wondered how a nail would suddenly appear out of nowhere and get into
her car tire.
Jack gets his hands and face dirty while changing
the tire on her car. She is really beginning to like him now. I based that on the fact she scrambles into the car to check her makeup in the rear
view mirror, while Jack wrestles with getting the spare tire on her car.
The dirt smudge across his forehead probably sealed the deal for her.
After placing the flat tire in her trunk, and telling her goodbye, for
some reason, Jack's truck won't start.
That
is something else that's not explained in the story. I wanted to know
why his vehicle wouldn't start. Made no sense to me that his newer,
dent-free, Ford F-150 extended cab manly white truck wouldn't start, and
Janet's old beat-up clunker cranked right up. In my opinion, this part
of the story is very unrealistic. My Ford truck has never failed to
start one time since the day I bought it in 1995. Then it comes to me.
If Jack had driven away alone, there could be no romantic relationship
developed between the two of them.
So
here is what happens next. Janet offers to give Jack a ride to the
closest auto parts store, which is twenty-six point eight miles down the
road in a small town called Hellish. And it just so happens that Snake
man is having lunch at what the locals refer to as the cesspool dinner,
which is located across the street from the auto parts store.
All
that was in the first chapter, which is as far as I've read, because
I'm getting sleepy. It's hard to get hooked on a story in which a Ford
truck won't start. At this point I'm thinking three stars, but after I
wake up and read some more, who knows, it could go either way, depending
on which truck part Jack buys at the auto parts store.
