Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I found the BBC/Netflix miniseries “Mrs. Wilson” absolutely fascinating, and I wanted to learn more about Alexander Wilson. Unfortunately the author, Tim Crook, while obviously a very talented researcher, has two major issues in writing this book. First, the research was instigated by one of Wilson’s sons, whose son is a close friend of Crook’s. In an effort to paint Wilson in the best possible light, no doubt to protect the family’s feelings, Crook indulges in some frankly ludicrous “what ifs” and justifications for Wilson’s behavior. In reality Wilson was a thief who went to jail multiple times, an appalling liar, a bigamist (4 families, which he tried to keep secret from each other, and no divorces), one of the worst perpetrators of “stolen valor” imaginable, a defrocked spy who was deemed too dangerous ever to work for his country again, and more. I am sorry for his children, who clearly believed his many lies and still desperately want to believe he was a “patriot,” but Wilson was a criminal con artist from start to finish, and he ruined the lives of four women. Second, and more frustrating, is that the author really needed a professional editor. The research material he uncovered, fascinating as it is, is so poorly organized as to be almost unreadable. The text is repetitive (whole passages appear in multiple chapters) and if you haven’t seen the series you’ll have no hope of following it. Even after watching the series and reading a lot of material on the author’s blog before embarking on the book, I could barely follow it at all. Questions would arise in one chapter and then be addressed in passing in a much later chapter. This was not in an effort to build suspense — this writer is not up to that level of sophistication — it’s just bad, bad organization. The sad thing is, this is the second edition and was apparently honed down enormously from the 600+ page first edition, yet it’s still a mess. In the end, the book does provide details that could not be fully addressed in the series, but it is just not good. It looks self-published, with really amateur graphics, layout and font choices. The margins are so narrow that it’s a struggle to read any text near the gutter. In the hands of a skilled professional writer, this story could make for a best-seller. Sadly, this writer, while hugely well-intentioned, just isn’t up to producing that.