Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Lizardskin

Carsten Stroud writes police procedurals from the perspective of the patrolman on the beat. They encounter life at its rawest and most primal and the author does nothing to spare the reader the gory details of man’s inhumanity to man. The present opus was published over 2 decades ago. Somehow I cringe at the Female District Attorney’s admonition that if you’re going to be forced to shoot a perp, shoot to kill and spare the county the cost of settling the ensuing lawsuit out of court; burial costs are cheaper.

Like so many books written since the arrival of computer word-processors this one suffers from word-bloat. The author waxes lyrical describing landscapes and people and how they dress. He digresses frequently at length to pages of background history which tends to make the story drag. It often takes him a long to get where he intends to go. A less is more approach would tauten the storyline.

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