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DOG ISLAND
by Mike Stewart
Berkley Prime Crime, January 2002
304 pages
$5.99
ISBN: 0425182045


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

This is a suspenseful book that started out well, and then fizzled. It's odd but I had actually put it down in order to read something else, and now, having finished it, I'm sorry I didn't stop when I did.

Mike Stewart is unknown to me; his first Tom McInnes Sins of the Brother deals with many of the same characters, apparently, as this second book. It starts with a good premise; a teenage runaway witnesses a murder. She's afraid to report it to the police because of her status, so she finds a friend who calls McInnes, a lawyer. They try to protect the girl, Carli, but it's a complicated story.

That's not the problem for me; the problem was that this book just got bloodier and bloodier and more violent and more violent. I lost count of how many bad guys were killed. And McInnes had a lot to do with it. Lots of rifles, guns, other weapons and after a while, you forget what it was that triggered the bloodbath. Stewart's editor should have, I feel, had him cut out about 50 pages and focus more on the characters. Instead, Cuban politics, murderers, smugglers, psychopaths all get in the mix, and while the book comes to a pretty satisfying conclusion, it was too messy for me on the way. I suspect Dog Island will appeal far more to the fans of macho thrillers than it did to me. I was disappointed in this book, because it started out well, but yuck.

Reviewed by Andi Shechter, January 2002

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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