Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Lately I’ve been perusing the list of free books offered daily by Amazon. Like that of the proverbial “blind squirrel” every once in a while I find an “acorn”. The Boatman, was a true “acorn” in the sense that it was a find of a read. I don’t re tell story lines in my reviews, opting otherwise to break them down into plot, character development, rising and falling action, anti climax and resolution. Leaving to the author to tell the story. This was in the genre of a crime thriller involving Columbus, Ohio Detective Reed Maddox and his partner, a female Belgian Malinois named Billie. The dog’s history is that of a military bomb sniffer whose original handler died while attempting to defuse an IED while stationed in Afghanistan. Billie is assigned to the K9 unit as a police dog for Detective Maddox to handle. I have had the occasion to see a K9 dog in action. They are incredible creatures, highly trained and fiercely loyal to their handler. They follow instructions to the letter. As an aside, when they retire from service, they get to live with their handler for the rest of their life. The plot of the story kept me interested from page one to page last with no “filler” in between. I put the book down intentionally from time to time to see if when I picked it back up I could recall what was going on without having to re read passages. I was able to do that with this read. I regard that as indicative of a tight plot. Character development of the protagonist, Maddox was thorough enough for the reader to get to know and understand how he conducted the investigation as a police detective. No confusion there at all. The antagonist is a serial killer who we only identify by his title, “The Boatman”. To say any more about the character is to spoil the story line. The rising action is linear, i.e., it rises slowly but uniformally to the anti climax, which screams out near the end. Reading the last 20 or so pages was a veritable roller coaster of a read. There is a resolution to the story and it is not maudlin. I did have to read the prologue again, however, after finishing the book.