Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsI may read more Charlie Hood books, but only when I'm desperate for reading material.
Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2018
I am not a big fan of anti-heroes so I had mixed feelings about Suzanne/Allison. I wanted to see her pay for her crimes but, because she was a bit of a Robin Hood, wanted to see her escape punishment somehow. If keeping the reader in that good/bad limbo was Parker’s aim, he succeeded in spades.
Too many times, the flow of this story is broken by flashbacks of Suzanne/Allison’s ancestor, Joaquin Murrieta. They didn’t add anything to the story, just lengthened it and slowed it down unnecessarily. The same applies to the extra storylines involving Hood’s father.
And too many of the skills and connections the characters have appear a little too conveniently when they are needed.
I suspected the one bad guy early on, right after Parker dropped a clue to his identity that was a little too obvious.
Parker’s writing is a bit dismal and cynical in tone. The story is full of greed, liars, and brutality. Even when the storyline sounds hopeful, there’s an underlying sense of desperation, sadness, and failure.
The climax of the story was realistic but disappointing. And of the five chapters that follow, only two are really needed. Like the flashbacks, those unneeded chapters lengthened the story but didn’t add anything to it.
And a caveat: The description of Suzanne/Allison and Charlie Hood being on the run for their lives is a lie.
This story had the potential to be great, but it only reached okay. So, I may try another Charlie Hood book in the future, but I won’t seek them out.
And Amazon continues its amazing ability to tell me how many pages a book has on the website but can’t number the pages in the download.
