Dylan reviewed Where serpents lie by T. Jefferson Parker
Review of 'Where serpents lie' on 'Storygraph'
2 stars
An interesting read. I was looking forward to reading a book that took place where I grew up, but to be perfectly honest, it hardly made a difference. With any other book, I already subconsciously picture local settings as I read along. The only difference this time was that those images were already specifically drawn out for me. But maybe that's just me.
Putting that aside, I didn't entirely enjoy the novel itself. While it had its moments of adrenaline and suspense, too much of it was filled with boring details. Specifically, entire chapters were devoted to the drab, complicated love life of the main character, Terry Naughton. By the end of the novel, I wasn't sure if I had just read a gut-wrenching mystery/thriller, or if it was more of a mid-life crisis take on the classic teenage love-triangle books that seem to be doing so well lately.
But …
An interesting read. I was looking forward to reading a book that took place where I grew up, but to be perfectly honest, it hardly made a difference. With any other book, I already subconsciously picture local settings as I read along. The only difference this time was that those images were already specifically drawn out for me. But maybe that's just me.
Putting that aside, I didn't entirely enjoy the novel itself. While it had its moments of adrenaline and suspense, too much of it was filled with boring details. Specifically, entire chapters were devoted to the drab, complicated love life of the main character, Terry Naughton. By the end of the novel, I wasn't sure if I had just read a gut-wrenching mystery/thriller, or if it was more of a mid-life crisis take on the classic teenage love-triangle books that seem to be doing so well lately.
But that's not my only issue with Terry Naughton! This hardly-relatable, temperamental cop of a main character constantly switches from periods of pure forensic genius to periods of complete investigative incompetence, often relying on lucky guesses or acts of pure happenstance to get to the bottom of that thing he totally needs to get to the bottom of right this instant. In other words, author T. Jefferson Parker often took the easy way out to advance the plot of the mystery/thriller part of the story. And sadly, as a result, most of the few big surprises featured in the novel were hardly surprises at all.
I give this novel two stars instead of one because, as mentioned earlier, it did have its moments of excitement and intrigue--they were just few and far between.
Maybe it's just not my genre.