The key to my major complaint about Bruen is the spoiler
(you've been warned). As far as I could see, the profiler
came out of thin air. The basis for the profiler's
description of the perp came out of thin air. And what does
Taylor do with the "information" provided by the profiler?
He
_forgets_ it even when, practically in the next breath, the
text describing his trip with the perp is in language very
close to that of the profile. As I recall, Taylor does not
even have the excuse of having "hit himself on the head" with
anything in the brief interval. He just flat misses it
altogether -- just long enough to let the wrong man be killed
in retribution. Then he says, "Oops."
My secondary complaint is that the drugs -- sorry, but as a
nonuser maybe I missed something here -- are decoration, not
integral to the plot; that the books and music -- at least
those I know something about -- don't bear on much of
anything in the story, but amount to another kind of
decoration, neither contributing to the story nor
illuminating the character(s). Both kinds of decoration
struck me as the author's attempt to demonstrate that his
character -- and therefore he -- is one really hip cat.
This criticism, as criticism is wont to do, sounds much
harsher than my overall evaluation. I'm not saying the book
is trash or worse; only that it had structural weaknesses,
which probably could have been avoided. And I look forward to
listmembers' turning that standard on me when(ever) my effort
is published.
Michael Etchison
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