Book review: Twisted, by Steve Cavanagh

A bit too clever for its own good (August 23, 2019)

There are some things that I find unappealing in crime fiction:

Books that are written from a certain point of view, but use grammar from a different point of view;
Stories set in small, sleepy towns that become the murder capital of the world;
Books that start part-way into the story, and then jump back in time (this goes for TV shows and movies, too); and
Books where so much is crammed into the storyline that the pacing is forced to speed up and slow down again.

Twisted, by Steve Cavanagh, has them all.

Although set in the United States, with Americans as the characters, the grammar is British. The author seems to want to be known as that guy who has many twists and turns in his novels. There are twists and turns, alright, but they come at the expense of the pace, which is virtually non-existent. And because there are so many twists and turns, the omniscient narrator chooses to think through all the options for each character. Pace: Gone. A couple of times I almost stopped reading Twisted because of this.

What the book does have going for it is that it pits several intelligent characters against each other, so there is a bit of tension there. Overall, though, because of the way this book is written, I doubt I'll be investing any time in his Eddie Flynn series.