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How many reviews must offer good news, bad news? It must be tiresome but often there's simply no other way to discuss a book. BROKEN WING isn't my usual, so for that, I praise it. It got my attention when I really was very lukewarm about reading it. I wasn't familiar with the author, and new authors are always welcome. And a mystery set in post-Katrina New Orleans always tempts me. It's a favorite city of mine, and I think it's a great setting for a mystery. Okay so - what I liked about this book. What I liked was the tech stuff, the FBI stuff, the "this is so cool and only Special Agents of the FBI get one" stuff. And the abilities of Mike Yeager who sees so much more in a room, or down the street or on the desk than I ever would, that's just cool. While I'm not a big fan of modern crime shows on television, when I do watch them, I find myself just knocked out by modern technology and smart cops (or other protagonists), who noted that stuff in the corner, or that you couldn't possibly have seen into the room from there. Yeager's been sent back to New Orleans, where he broke a crime ring a long time back, and he's masquerading as a bad agent, a "rogue,"open to blackmail and coercion. He's there to try to rescue a woman from the clutches of the mob boss he took down once before but it quickly gets complicated. And it's the complications that messed it up for me. Not only does Yeager encounter the woman he loved, and left, who happens to be the mob boss's daughter, (some twenty years ago) but the rescue of the kidnapped woman is overly complicated. And the more I read, the less plausible the side stories were, up to and including a story line I simply found unbelievable. Why? Because in order to believe it, I had to believe that this otherwise really tech savvy, 21st century intelligence agency was inept at one of the things it was supposed to do very well. There were also far too many coincidences for me - and I tend to believe that coincidences are the sign of a writer who doesn't know how to get out of a tight spot. When a basic premise doesn't work in a book (this often occurs in badly written science fiction when authors simply don't play by certain fundamentals) it causes me to question the other parts of the book. BROKEN WING had some cool stuff in it, but cool stuff does not a mystery novel make. Alas.
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, March 2009
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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