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Blogs by Gabriel Boutros
From the sublime to the...well, not quite good enough 4/21/2014 11:30:07 AM
Here is my review of Deadly Secrets, an Indie book that wasn't quite ready for prime time. This book is neither great nor terrible. It is a biological thriller that has a fairly interesting plot, but one that seems to be put together from many other books. There's a huge multinational corporation, run by a super-rich megalomaniac who controls a super-secret and all-powerful criminal organization; there are good and bad scientists running experiments which could help feed the hungry or destroy the world, depending on who's controlling the process; there are corrupt politicians, and double-dealing secret agents from competing secret organizations; and, what would a thriller be without a Russian oligarch trying to get his hands on the results of their work? Despite attempts at originality by the author, the whole story comes off as a bit cliched, like he had a list of characters and plot twists gathered from other books that he went through and checked off as he wrote it. It also drags at times, especially in scenes where too much time is spent on details of the company's business dealings, or the science behind the process that is being developed, or the food some of the rich people eat, or the exotic weaponry that the mercenaries use, and so on. It feels like the author has done a great deal of research on these things and feels the need to show off his knowledge, but more often than not these details are introduced in a very clunky, obvious way, and they make many of these scenes boring.
The writing is generally competent, although a good editor and proof-reader (if only to insert some much-needed commas) could have helped.
