We are talking one bad book here. This was a road trip audio book, selected to keep my sister and I company as we drove to Boston.
Oh, it was bad. Really, really bad. So bad that we could not turn it off because its very high degree of badness was both amazing and entertaining. We ended up shouting at the CD player when something improbable, impossible or just really stupid happened. And the writing matched the plotting.
In this book, the fourth in the Holly Barker series, Ms. Barker gets pulled early out of her CIA training and suddenly is directing the effort to catch serial killer Teddy Fay, a former CIA agent himself. It’s difficult to say just how awful this was — Barker’s CIA mentor is intent on giving Barker management experience, seeming to forget that she commanded a regiment in the Army. Barker has all the good ideas, but has an awesomely large brain fart when Teddy Fay shows up at the opera. And the ending stinks, too.
This book did, however, raise an important question: is the author really this bad or so contemptuous of his readers that he doesn’t believe they will notice how bad his book is? This is the second Stuart Woods book I’ve read and I deeply regret them both.