A plotline that was murdered! (The Murder Game - Beverly Barton)

Member Name: rune_tune

Product:	The Murder Game - Beverly Barton
Date:	10/10/08 (126 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It does actually have a good premise

Disadvantages: Too many errors, one major plot mistake!

A plotline that was murdered!

The Murder Game by Beverly Barton

~ About Beverly Barton ~

Born and raised in Alabama, Beverly had her first novel published in 1990. She was by then a mother whose children had left the nest, and so started writing to help fill in some of her time.
She considers herself to have two writing styles. Some books are noted as being romantic suspense, the others just simply romance books in nature.
She has now written over 60 novels in both genres.
The Murder game was released in 2008.

~ The book synopsis. ~

We begin with someone being hunted through woodland. A woman is trying desperately to escape the clutches of her tormentor, but eventually he wins and she is killed. He has now killed 5 women in 5 different states.
But the game for the hunter has changed. No longer satisfied just with killing someone, he knows he needs an adversary to make the hunt and kill more exciting -
Because he has done this sort of thing before, only his cousin and former partner in crime is now dead. Leaving him with no-one to battle his wits against.

But then he decides on the two people who can be those adversaries. Private Investigator Griffon Powell, and FBI Agent Nicole Baxter had brought down another serial killer, his cousin no less and the only person the FBI were willing to attribute to the previous killings. Only 2 people disagreed with this and had always maintained there were indeed two separate killers. Who better to drag into his games?

Griffon and Nicole are bitter enemies, forced together initially by circumstances beyond their control, are now forced to work together a second time. Only this time, the stakes are much higher and emotions begin to come into play like they never thought possible.

To catch this psychopathic killer they both need to not only work together, but also possibly lose everything close to them, and by then it might be too late.

~ My thoughts on the book ~

Overall the plotline and writing was good enough. It wasn't the most tense of thriller novels I've read, but it was good enough to want to keep finding out more about who the killer was, what motivated him and also how Griffin and Nicole both dealt with the situation.

We get nicely balanced looks into Griffin and Nicole's past that helps us understand not only their desire to hunt the killer down, but also why they interact with people in the way that they do. -

The romantic angle Beverly Barton is known for tends to take a bit of a back seat in this story, and that's not such a bad thing. Unfortunately I've not read any of her other books, so I don't know how this might compare to others in this particular genre.

There was a nice balance of intricacy, which makes it a nice easy read but without it becoming so boring you switch off straight away. Her writing style in this novel means she likes to give you more than just the viewpoint of the hunter and the people chasing him. You also get a nice look at the victims and how it affects them, but without it being overly gory or too insensitive.

It's nicely paced, but again as I've said an easy enough read, all good points in any book, but particularly in this genre. But this also did have the feeling of "I've read this all before." Because of the way it came across.
Its not the sort of in-depth writing that can keep you occupied discussing with someone else for example, but still good enough for you to perhaps mention it for someone to look out for.

And tell someone to look out for it I would - Except for some glaring issues I had reading this!

Now, reading the first part of this review you would think I enjoyed the book - and in many ways I did. But there are some glaring mistakes and plotline issues with it that really wrecked any enjoyment I was getting from reading it all.

First of all, Griffin Powell and his lost 10 years. We later find out what caused him to disappear for 10 years, and how he amassed his fortune. It all just was too contrived to fit into this storyline, and so felt totally unbelievable. Now I've no problem with this aspect being brought into the story, but if you are going to show the characters flaws and past history, I prefer to see it in a much more plausible setting and not one so obviously set up to mirror the present events going on around him.

But, despite my moans about this aspect, it isn't what annoys me the most.
What annoyed me more than anything were absolutely appalling errors in storyline continuity, spelling mistakes, and geographical errors.

The biggest issue for me was the way we suddenly "lost" a body! We had 5 known murders, in 5 different states.
Suddenly we are down to four whilst in discussions about the murders. Now I was so stunned by this I actually read the passages out to my partner, and then read from the beginning again to see if I hadn't mistaken something and the numbers were right for this particular aspect of the book.

I could not find any reason why suddenly we were down to 4 murders! Not one - and yet right at the end of the book - miraculously we get the right figure given (allowing for additional bodies to appear). And this wasn't just something mentioned once mistakenly, it was mentioned in more than one passage in the book!

This completely ruined the rest of the book for me because I just kept thinking back to this mistake the whole way through and wondering how it wasn't spotted or did I really miss something even after reading it through from the start again. Mind you, the spelling and grammatical errors right the way through the book were also astounding! I accept the occasional typing error can occur, but again in this instance I thought it was way above what I would normally find and so isn't acceptable.

There was also a geographical error, and considering I'm not American, to have picked up on that is enough for me to wonder was it someone who wasn't qualified proof reading this story!

~ So final thoughts ~

Overall, this wouldn't have been a bad book to read, and I would have given it 4 stars. But as you've probably noticed the errors it produced were enough to effectively ruin all the good work it did contain.

So therefore I won't recommend this book to anyone, nor am I likely to read another Beverly Barton book unless it's a freebie. The mistakes right the way through are not good enough for a writer who has written so many books previously. Had this been her first attempt I could forgive it more, but not over 60 books later. Her editing team need a bomb putting under them basically.

So it's a poor 1 star from me.

~ Availability ~

I paid £3-87 from Tesco's for my copy. It seems to be widely available from other suppliers, and prices do seem to vary from £1-34 used (exc. P&P)
ISBN-10: 1847560598
ISBN-13: 978-1847560599

This review will also be on Ciao.

Summary: Overall the book was let down by too many errors.