No Time To Run

First of all, I’m guessing that the editing issues that previous reviewers complained about have been resolved. I saw very few grammar or spelling problems, and I’m usually pretty picky about that.

The writing was decent but I knew nothing, and felt nothing, for the characters and that ruined the whole book for me. The writer gave virtually no insight into any of the characters, certainly not the main ones, and other than the fact that *POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT* Michael was young, lazy, and probably a thief, if not worse, and his girlfriend was hiding things from him and was possibly a murderer, I have no idea what these characters are like.

If I can’t relate to the characters, I sure am not going to care about what happens to them. They sell each other out first chance they get, and I just didn’t care what happened to them. The most developed character was an odd, hippie Vietnam vet who spent most of his time hanging upside down from the ceiling with magic markers. I certainly didn’t care about that character either.

The plot required a total suspension of belief, and although the action was good, and it was not a totally boring book, there just wasn’t any way a plot like that was believable.

This book had potential but I was very disappointed in the finished product.

The bright side of this novel is that moves right along. One things leads to another, and keeping the events going requires writing ability.

The other side is that character motivations don’t add up to a coherent plot. For more details and harsher description than I will use, see H. Hanford’s one-star review.

Like a character in a horror film, Michael continually walks into situations that made me mutter, “You moron.”

Michael, his sidekick Kermit, and Andie are all wasting away with booze and marijuana in Mexico as Andie’s beach resort slides toward bankruptcy. I’ve got nothing in particular against that lifestyle, but it does not inspire confidence in the responsibility of these three, either.

Among the motivations that do not add for me — and this is the short list —

1. Michael forgives Andie for being poised to throw him to the authorities to decrease her own jail time.

2. Michael returns to Mexico, knowing he will be pursued there.

3. His boss’s secretary prefers to commit murder rather than perhaps attend law school herself, because she believes her contributions to the super-star legal firm have been overlooked.

4. Isn’t it time for someone to perform an intervention for Kermit to get him some much-needed help on the VA Bill?

Hanford’s list is even longer.

There nothing particularly bad about the writing; I am so used to spelling errors for homonyms and other typos in free Kindle books that I am no longer bothered by them.

There is nothing particularly lyrical or evocative about the writing, either.

As one of my middle-school teachers used to say, “You pays your money and you takes your choice.”

So when I pay nothing for a book, I’ve made a choice. I commend the writers who make their work available to me, because I get exposed to many newcomers to the novel trade I might otherwise not read.

I made it to chapter 19 before I called it a day. Achingly slow pacing and zero character development made me want to pull my eyelashes out. If I don’t know and care about the characters, then I can’t care what happens to them. The chapters are short and end just when things are heating up. I understand wanting to end a chapter with a cliff hanger, but you have to actually develop the chapter first in order to keep the reader engaged.

Mr. Trafford would do well to employ a solid editor who can teach him the basics of story flow, pacing, plot development, and character development. The main character is about as bland as a Nilla Wafer, which is sad because Mr. Trafford isn’t without talent. With some pointers, he could develop into a very good writer.

The best thing about this book is that it’s written in the style of John Grisham. The storyline held my interest throughout. Characters were filled out as to their backgrounds and motivations. I would have rated this book with 4 stars except for one thing: sloppy proofreading. I can overlook a few things, but there were so many errors, it was distracting. Other than that, it was a good read that I would recommend to others.

This is a difficult book to rate because it has strong good points but significant bad points too.

First, the good… from the very first page, I could tell that this was going to be a well-written story. And on the whole, I wasn’t disappointed – excellent prose, decent plot development, good characterisation, an interesting tale – everything I look for in a good book.

The downside is that I was slightly confused about some elements of the storyline, and I felt that there were unexplained characters, relationships and events that might have made more sense had there been more background to put things into context. All through the book I was expecting these issues to be brought out in a satisfying ending but on the contrary, I thought the ending to be extremely rushed. With a bit of extra work (and a good editor – see next paragraph) this could easily have been a five-star read.

Annoyingly, and puzzlingly, I did notice a few (though not an awful lot) of spelling mistakes (e.g. ‘waived’ for ‘waved’, and ‘peaked’ for ‘peeked’ – repeatedly – and even for ‘piqued’) which I found strange given the author’s facility with words. It was this, rather than the book’s lesser failings, that marked it as self-published work.

Overall I did enjoy the book and I would recommend it to fans of legal fiction although I’m glad I didn’t pay much for it. I have picked up the next book – No Time To Die – and I am looking forward to reading it.

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