Author: Robert Abbamonte

Publisher: OutskirtsPress.com

ISBN: 1-59800-396-8

The following review was contributed by:  Evelyn Sears:   Click here to read more of Evelyn's Review: 

Jim Hargrove, a former police detective, and Debra Simms, a former insurance investigator, are partners in marriage and a private detective agency.  Their adventure begins when Jim answers a late-night phone call and overhears his client’s murder.  Jim and Debra’s pursuit of the murderer takes them out of Buffalo, through South American jungles and into the Oval Office.  Before long, in addition to hunting for a murderer, Jim and Debra are trapped in a complex web involving the CIA, the White House, the government of Columbia and the Columbian Cartel.

The greatest weakness of this book is that the reader is never sure if it is a murder mystery or a spy story.  It apparently tries to be both and does not succeed in either genre.  Most of the time, the murder mystery is submerged beneath the tale of smuggling and espionage, only to occasionally rise up and remind the reader (and possibly the characters) that there is a murder to solve. 

Another serious weakness is that the story is not credible.  Only the most cynical conspiracy theorist would accept the notion that a pair of ordinary private investigators would be coerced – by the CIA and the President of the United States, no less – into espionage and then plunged into the jungles of South America with no training and no Spanish language skills.  I know fiction is imaginary, but good fiction always has at its roots some conceivable semblance of reality.  Plausibility is essential if readers are going to identify with the characters and become engaged with the plot.  Implausible plots plunge the story into the realm of fantasy, a genre for which this story is neither intended nor suited.

Credibility is further strained when the key piece of the puzzle is provided by a character created and dropped into the story solely to provide that chunk of evidence.  A well conceived and executed mystery is one in which the evidence is assembled and revealed (sometimes so subtly as to be almost invisible) throughout the story.  The surprise character or fact parachuted into the story without foundation strikes readers as an escape route created merely to enable the author to rush forward to the end.  Readers are much more satisfied when they discover that all of the necessary clues were always right in front of them, simply requiring someone (ideally, the reader) to arrange them in their proper sequence.

The final weakness of this book is its atrocious editing.  There are far too many cases in which subjects and verbs disagree and in which words are used improperly.  The book is littered with misuses of “your” and “you’re” – of “breadth” and “breath” – and of “their,” there,” and they’re,” to cite just a few examples.  Errors such as these are unacceptable.  They are also excruciating when they recur incessantly.

Given these critical weaknesses in plotting and editing, I can not recommend this book.  It is appropriate to note, however, that Abbamonte’s vivid imagination is admirable.  If he can tame that imagination and be more disciplined about his grammar and plotting, then his future books may be pleasantly entertaining.