Dog Island

Rating:
Summary: A great day on Dog Island
Review: A great story! I love mysteries where I am not only drawn in, but I'm transported. After finishing Dog Island I felt like I just got back from Florida. I was scratching at imaginary mosquito bites. Mike Stewart has an intimate, distinctive style that draws you in and makes you at home, even when Tom is about to get stomped by swamp hillbillies with big trucks. He never lets the story go and his characters are fresh and compelling.

Thanks for a great time, Mike. I can't wait to meet Tom and friends again.

Rating:
Summary: A great day on Dog Island
Review: A great story! I love mysteries where I am not only drawn in, but I'm transported. After finishing Dog Island I felt like I just got back from Florida. I was scratching at imaginary mosquito bites. Mike Stewart has an intimate, distinctive style that draws you in and makes you at home, even when Tom is about to get stomped by swamp hillbillies with big trucks. He never lets the story go and his characters are fresh and compelling.

Thanks for a great time, Mike. I can't wait to meet Tom and friends again.

Rating:
Summary: Great Page Turner
Review: After reading two pages of Dog Island, I knew this was a book I had to finish. Mike Stewart does a masterful job of grabbing your attention early and keeping you guessing in which direction the characters will go next. This is a mystery that you won't figure out until the end (but don't start there). Great job Mike, and thanks for the autograph (New Orleans 2/17/01). I will definitely follow up with Sins of the Brother.

Rating:
Summary: Great action swamped by implausibilty
Review: I'm going to keep picking up Stewart's books because the pacing and style are becoming more polished. An absolutely riveting page turner that is killed by being too complicated. Keep it simple. A good book doesn't need three endings. How do all those bodies go undiscovered? Our hero figures out the complex and overlooks the obvious. Strangers divulge secrets and offer aid without motive. There's a great book coming and I will wait.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not as good as first, less belivable
Review: If this book didn't keep you on the edge of your seat wondering what could possibly happen next, I don't know what would. Up until the last few paragraphs, the book twisted and turned with all sorts of possible changes.

True to form, Mr Stewart has written an excellent book, with characters that are good, but not quite as good as his first work, Sins of the Brother.

There is one picky detail that I'm stuck on, since I live in Mobile. The last time I checked, I-65 runs north/south, and I-10 runs east/west....

Rating:
Summary: Sophomore Slump
Review: Mike Stewart, who wrote the incredible "Sins of the Brother", suffers through his sophomore slump with this newest novel, "Dog Island". Returning former-attorney Tom McInnes is back dodging bullets and bad guys, even though he insists he's "only an attorney". It seems that trouble just seems to find him no matter what...which would be to the benefit of everyone's entertainment if only "Dog Island" were as good as the first. The characters felt somehow less vibrant this time around, and didn't bring about the empathy or interest the author was aiming for. With too many predictable twists and turns, Stewart's writing feels as bogged down as the swamplands in which this second effort takes place.

Basing this story on the witness of a grisly murder by a teenage runaway, Stewart continues the characterizations he introduced in "Sins of the Brother", though by mid-story, one hopes that they all meet untimely deaths, or at least decide to move to another state. While confusing multiple identities with plotline, "Dog Island" becomes only repetitive and dreary by the exceptional "seen-it-coming" ending. One would hope that this slump is only temporary, for the promise that "Sins..." showed us says that Stewart is very talented. Let's hope he's not a one-hit wonder!

Rating:
Summary: Thrilling
Review: See story summary above.

An engaging mystery thriller set in the panhandle of Florida and parts of Alabama. The story moves at a good pace and provides plenty of thrills and some graphic violence. The lead character, Tom McInnes, seems to smart off quite a bit when he's surrounded by the enemy, which seems somewhat stupid, but other than that he's quite likable. An overall smoothly written novel laced with humor and bodies. I'm looking forward to the follow up to this novel, which is obviously to be expected, because of the unexpected....

Recommended for thrills and mystery.

Rating:
Summary: No surprises
Review: There is a prototypical hero who has become all but generic. He is clever, often a lawyer, has more moxie than muscle; he is an honorable man, determined to keep his word at all costs. He always has a "partner" who's a behemoth type, big and brawny and techno-savvy. And these two buddies toss banter back and forth while in the midst of life-and-death situations. Then there's the love interest; she's lovely and wise and wounded. The hero and his cohorts vary only in locale. Dog Island's setting is Florida, with side trips back to our hero, Tom McInnes's, home base in Mobile. One of the primary features of books featuring these types of characters is an endless itinerary; we get the names of every highway between Mobile and Appalachicola, as well as routes to anywhere else McInnes has to go. I've often wondered why so many mystery writers feel compelled to give endless details (like AAA trip maps) of where they're going and how they get there.

There are a couple of crusty old ex-military coots who come in very handy, a mysterious hispanic fellow of great charm (with good suits), a sexually abused teenager who teeters on the edge of believability, and everything is set in motion by this teenager's witnessing a murder.

Mike Stewart writes well; the narrative jogs along at a steady clip. But there's really nothing new here. A few scenes work really well, offering an insight into the kind of work Mr. Stewart could produce if he spent less time describing highways and more time on creating characters with depth.

It's a quick and easy book to read, but memorable it isn't. There's too much formula, too many almost-stock characters, and too little resolution. Perhaps the next book will show the results of a bit more hard work and some deeper thought.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not as good as first, less belivable
Review: This book is good, but not as good as the first. By the end of this book these characters are worn out and its time that he strays from the using the Tom McInnes clan in his books. Despite lackluster characters, his mastery of dialogue, description and plot keep this a very good book. It's sad though, because I look on this sight and see that his next book once again has Tom McInnes and his buddies, who are just to worn out to be effective characters. Hopefully his book after A Clean Kill will have new characters and new situations.

Rating:
Summary: I'm hooked!
Review: When I learned that fellow law school classmate Mike Stewart had written a book, I just had to read it. Little did I know that 'Sins of the Brother' would be one of my favorite books of all time. Naturally, I snapped up 'Dog Island' as soon as I could get my hands on it. It didn't let me down. I can't wait for Mike Stewart to publish #3!