Friday, June 8, 2012

The King of Lies (John Hart)

Audio/Hardcover

The reader was just horrible for this audiobook.  He sounded like an incompetent film noir narrator, making it really difficult to discern when he was switching between characters or when a certain emotion was required.  To make things more enjoyable, I began supplementing my listening with actual reading...but I found out that no amount reader skill was going to save the mess that is this book.

"Work" Pickens' father has turned up dead after missing for a couple of years and he looks like the most likely suspect.  Work has an awesome girlfriend, a shrewish wife, a bitch of a detective sniffing after him and seemingly zero friends.  He jumps to conclusions, does stupid shit and generally digs himself deeper at every turn -- he's just incredibly hard to root for.  And there's not one but TWO victims of childhood sexual abuse in these pages, so that just adds to the fun.

One of the worst things about going for a book a week is that it's really difficult to quit reading a crappy book.  If I'm more than 50 pages in, I've wasted too much time with a book to toss it away.  Books like this are making me reconsider the value of this resolution.  Blech.

D