Rating: 
Summary: *** BLACK WATER..... WHITE SPERM****
Review: THIS MURDER MYSTERY IS AS WELL WRITTEN IN ITS WAY AS "SPERM," THE UNLIKELY-TITLED BOOK BY L. VALENTINE...
BOTH ARE TRUE MURDER MYSTERY MASTERPIECES..... IS VALENTINE A PEN NAME FOR PARKER, AS BACHMAN WAS FOR KING?
Rating:
Summary: Parker Keeps Getting Better and Better
Review: This newest entry from Parker was so engrossing that I read it through in one sitting -- and emerged blinking my eyes at the world as it was rather than as I had experienced it in this complex drama of murder and redemption.Homicide detective Merci Rayborn returns to Parker's pen to solve the murder and attempted murder of a young Southern California golden girl and her husband, Gwen and Archie Wildcraft. Archie is a deputy in Rayborn's Orange County Sheriff's office. So -- is it a simple home robbery gone bad? or a husband getting rid of his wife and deliberately shooting himself in the head to throw off suspicion? or organized crime gone amok? or someting else entirely? If you read Black Water for nothing more than the plot, you will be richly rewarded, but you will miss the book's most powerful effect -- the complexity of character that subtly sucks in the reader until the climax becomes as personally devastating to the reader as it is for some of the characters, and as redemptive as it is for Merci. The delicate balance between work and family, the world and home, the principle and the person is one that Parker has achieved with grace and power. I've followed his books since his first, Little Laguna, and he just keeps getting better. He is among my top 5 favorite authors.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Boring and Tedious
Review: Unlike "Silent Joe", which was a very enjoyable book, this novel takes forever to get to a not-hard-to-guess ending. The plot moves at a snails pace, and the author spends many paragraphs on things that have nothing to do with the storyline. The worst is the constant references to Merci's son, that seemed to be in the book for the sole purpose to make readers go "Aaah, isn't that sweet". If all the space taken up by showing how "cute" her son is was cut from the book, it would be about 1/3 shorter. The kid calling Archie "Awchie" all the time made me want to put the book down for good without finishing it. There is no suspense in this novel, and the lead characters are just not very involving. Get it from your library if you want to read this, but save your money.
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