The Night Stalker by Robert Bryndza
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
DNFed. Twice.
First time, I dropped it around chapter 4. The writing just felt terrible, I kept stumbling over it and going back to frown at it every few paragraphs. I wanted to scream that nespresso is the cheapest espresso machine there is (I checked UK Amazon later and saw that while it’s true for my country, they’re pretty expensive in UK and let it go) and the idea that the main character was from Slovakia was pulled in by the ears and then was not represented in any way in the rest of the text at all (not that I even finished the book, so maybe I’m wrong, but in the parts I did read it certainly didn’t have any sense for her to be from Slovakia).
So I thought that was it, but then when I went to goodreads and took a look if people felt the same, I was surprised to see so many positive reviews. So I thought maybe I should give it a second chance and tried again.
And it really didn’t get any better.
Very soon I realized that the author was simply trying to write it like describing a cheap-ish detective drama, exactly the way you’d see things on the tv. It is full of clichés, none of them pleasant or nostalgic. Sexism, racism, psychopathic narcissists, closed-minded superiors, words ‘gay bashing’ dropping left and right… Detective Moss (almost Morse) and Dr. Strong (no comment).
The interludes about the culprit – the very first chapter, the chat room, the part where the author actually tries to explain the whole psychology behind the murders in the very beginning of the book and then pretend like he didn’t – felt repulsive. Every few pages I’d come across some line of dialog or description that would make my hair stand up, and then it got to a point that this book was getting me angrier about my actual work of proofreading and editing texts, and I decided that there is no reason to torture myself any further if this book and me are clearly not made for each other.
And judging by the reviews, I’m not missing much about the story either.
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