|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
Zoe Hayes and her close friend Susan are out rowing on the Schuylkill River. After tipping over, they discover the river is full of corpses. When all is said and done, they learn that there are a total of 19 dead Asian women in the river. The police are called in and Nick Stiles, Zoe’s boyfriend, is assigned the case. These dead women appear to have been the victims of sex slave traders as they all bear a brand. As the local paper published their names in the story, Zoe and Susan are worried that the slave traders will come after them. When the threats begin, their fears are realized. Zoe’s home is broken into; Molly, Zoe’s six-year-old adopted daughter, notices someone following her; and Susan experiences a carjacking. In addition to these scary events, they are also questioned by the FBI, questioned by two strange people claiming to belong to an agency that protects women caught by slave traders, and notice unusual fights at the boathouse. To top it all off, Nick is being very secretive about what is going on and how the case is going. Nick does not believe them to be in danger but he cannot provide an explanation as to why they are safe. Zoe must begin her own investigation in order to keep her family safe and stop the slave traders from finding additional victims. THE RIVER KILLINGS is not a strong mystery. The story is very choppy and the action does not move smoothly. Rather than move progressively to a resolution, this story moves in starts and stops. The formula behind this book seems to be to make the plot as convoluted as possible and have at least one of the protagonists injured every 30 pages. Said formula seems to be someone gets hurts, the plot slows down as that person heals then someone gets hurt and the cycle begins again. Then, after so many peaks and valleys in the plot the last 20 pages of the book are anticlimactic. Rather than have a well-written and cohesive conclusion that could tie all of the chaos together, the book has three different conclusions. Basically Jones spends the last 20 pages of the book tying up loose ends that she could not resolve previously. The choppiness of the plot leading up to the conclusion is aggravating, but the way the book ends is simply disappointing. THE RIVER KILLINGS does have some strengths, such as decently-developed characters and attention to detail, but the flaws discussed in the above paragraph ruin this book for me. Ultimately this book feels unfinished and cluttered. This book would be much stronger if Jones limited the number of coincidences, and the amount of implausible events. This series shows potential but it has a long way to go before it will be successful.
Reviewed by Sarah Dudley, December 2006
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
