Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'll start by saying that I gave this book 1.5 stars because Richards is actually a really good writer and I can tell that he has the ability to write a suspenseful thriller. I'll say I ONLY gave this book 1.5 stars because this book was an absolute disaster and Richards skills as a writer are the only thing that save this book from having NO stars. Richards set out to write a book that is heavy in the forensic sciences and it becomes obvious very early on that he did no research in actual forensic science. The lead character is a forensic anthropologist, but Richards has her not only functioning as the FBI Supervisory Special Agent in Charge, which she's not, she's a forensic scientist, that is made clear multiple times, but he also has her functioning as the forensic pathologist. All of the victims are more or less fully intact. The particular skill set possessed by a forensic anthropologist would not have been called upon unless the bodies were mostly skeletonized, fragmented or otherwise extremely damaged, such as in an explosion or burning. Another problem is the other forensic experts on the FBI team, they discuss aspects of the case with each other jumping back and forth in the same sentence between professional jargon and layman translations of that jargon. Additionally, they give explanations to each other for things, that the others, also being experts in forensics, should already know. And what's more, the explanations are wrong. Not to mention the main character popping Xanax like no body's business. Maybe most people don't realize this, but Xanax is in the same family as Valium, it's not only in the same family, it's like the bigger stronger brother of Valium. No one popping Xanax like the main character is going to be thinking clear headed enough to being doing this particular job. You can't even legally drive for 8 hours after taking Xanax. Then there is this other character with the visions. He is introduced as he is going to see his PSYCHIATRIST, not psychologist, psychiatrist. I don't know who is in more denial about what is going on with this character. The guy or the psychiatrist. The guy is taken to the psychiatrist with what are essentially vivid descriptions of what, by all accounts are very vivid visual, auditory and olfactory hallucinations and the psychiatrists response is to label these hallucinations "Day Dreams" and to wax on about how everyone dreams and dreams are just dreams, nothing to worry about, just need to learn to focus better. And then gives him a prescription for Amitriptyline (which is an antidepressant and not recommended for use in patients with schizophrenia or Bi-polar) and a prescription for Mellaril to treat his insomnia (Mellaril is a strong antipsychotic that is rarely prescribed because of the extreme and potentially lethal side effects)it is not given for insomnia. When the patient complains that he is having difficulty waking up in the morning the psychiatrist recommends backing off on how much he is taking of the Mellaril until he no longer has difficulty waking up in the morning. Holy Cow! Anyone who knows anything about antipsychotic medications knows you DO NOT play fast and loose with the dosage and you most certainly don't play loose with the dosage of an antipsychotic like Mellaril. Estimating time of death by stating that green bottle fly's wouldn't have laid eggs on an exposed body in the middle of July in Indiana for at least 24 hours? Try less than an hour. And further estimating time of death with the explanation that the eggs would have taken 9-10 days to hatch? Uhm...did you do ANY kind of research? Seriously, in warm conditions, like Indiana in July, those eggs would have hatched in as little as 10 hours and if it were a chilly fall they may have taken as much as 3 days to hatch. In 10 days in the middle of July those eggs not only would have hatched, the larvae would have gone through all 3 instars and been a pupal stage. Now we get to ridiculous characterizations. Why on earth would the police DISPATCHER be wearing a gun and gun belt while she sat in the station functioning as a dispatcher? Police/Sheriff office dispatchers are not generally officers. And from the way this one was described, she was not pulling double duty as both a dispatcher and an officer. Which means she was filling the function of your typical small town dispacher, which is essentially a secretary. And the Sheriff. He's been given a tip about what may have happened to a girl who has been reported missing, he goes to investigate, he finds evidence that supports the eye witness account. He finds blood next to the side walk that runs along the road next to the woods in the vicinity where the eye witness says he saw a man splattered with "red polka dots" shoving something into his truck bed. He calls the town coroner to take a sample of the blood. They are going to send the blood off to be analyzed for DNA and Blood typing (which incidentally the coroner said the blood typing would take at least a day, seriously? When I was in high school almost 20 years ago, in my biology class we did a blood typing activity with these little kits that gave us the results in a matter of minutes.) Where this scenario really runs off the rails is after they gather a blood sample and look around noting that they don't see disturbed leaves along the edge of the woods to suggest a struggle. Also they note the blood was in drops not smeared, so they speculate about how it got there and throw out this gem "it's looks like arterial splatter". And then they walk away. Really, they walk away and decide they will look around a little more in a week or so if the DNA results come back positive for the missing girl. I realize that this is a small town sheriff, but seriously, I can't believe he is really that much of an idiot. Come on, picture yourself as the Sheriff, as the sheriff you've received a report of a girl missing, you have also received a report of a suspicious looking man with red spatters over his clothes and face stuffing something under a paint tarp in his truck bed in the exact location that the missing girl was supposed to have been located, you go to the location of the eye witness account and you find blood on the ground next to the woods, that is still fresh enough that it is tacky. And then you, as the Sheriff, come to the conclusion that you DON'T think that is sufficient reason to go looking around a bit in the nearby woods? Supposedly, the rational for this reasoning is that if the girls parents hear about you looking around in the woods after finding fresh blood they may jump to the worst conclusions. Seriously, come on. At that point I was so mad at all of the stupid lapses in common sense and glaring lack of even basic Wikipedia level research into the contents of the book that I threw it in a drawer. I had to really convince myself to finish the book, because I hate not finishing books. Even if you can get past all of THAT, the main character as another reviewer mentioned "is a hot mess". Her boss, the man she is still swooning over at the same time she is resenting and hating him is a jack ass. Everyone who is supposed to be in positions of authority and supervision are absolute disasters at being team leaders and supervisors while at the same time they are chewing everyone out on their teams for essentially not being psychic magicians who can magically materialize evidence and read their supervisors minds. And then you have this whole other paranormal thing and cannibal thing and they just don't really fit, they feel like they are being thrown in from left field to give it more drama but it feels artificial. Like I said in the beginning, the writing itself is very good. I think given different content I would really like Richards as an author, but seriously, how did this get past his editors to actually get published?