Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Big Lake. I have read all of the Michael Connelly, David Baldacci, and Richard Castle books, and was looking for a new author that might write novels of the same caliber. After reading the reviews for Big Lake I was so hopeful that Nick Russell might be my new "must read" author. The book was inexpensive as a kindle edition, and I began reading with great expectations. It turns out that I wasted my $.99, and the several hours it took to read the book. The writing style was amateurish, the characters were poorly developed, and the plot was thin. I figured out who the killer was in the first few chapters. I was dismayed at what a shallow lead character Jim Weber turned out to be. After reading the entire book I cannot give a full physical description of the man, nor do I know much about him as a man. I'm glad to learn that Big Lake is a fictional town, because there is virtually no reality to the description Russell gives of small town life in Arizona. There were also numerous glaring editing errors in the book. One chapter had Sheriff Weber and FBI agent Park searching the cabin of murder victim Phil Johnson. Astonishingly the sheriff was doing laundry of his uniforms at this cabin, and the agent commented on a truck the sheriff was restoring in the garage! Then Park noticed that Johnson's vehicle was missing from that same garage! I'm fairly sure that you don't do laundry at a crime scene, nor do you restore trucks in a crime scene garage. The story took place over just about a week, and the sheriff managed to make love with two different women that he had never bedded before, and he wanted badly to sleep with a third. Only his "virtue" stopped him from sleeping with her. The sheriff's office was staffed with keystone cops, and the FBI agents were laughable in both their dialogue and conduct. There is no reason to believe the book was a comedy as several people were murdered, yet I found myself laughing at just how sophomoric the dialogue was. I'm not saying that you shouldn't read this book. But if your standards for quality writing are of the Connelly or Baldacci vein, then you probably will feel that you have wasted your time with this author and his work.