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The Night Stalker (Detective Erika Foster, #2)

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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And on a more fun note, it’s easy to tell when translators start to freak out about some otaku topic when they suddenly start writing ‘mate’ instead of ‘meet’ and ‘grope’ instead of ‘group’ … I’m not even kidding. My co-worker had a lot of fun proofreading a text a while back.

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I find it fascinating how many bitter videos there are on utube of people ‘disappointed in Japan’ after they came here and it wasn’t the fluffy otaku land they expected… I never knew

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I can love strangers, without loving them romantically.
And then people come and say that that’s because I’m too screwed and just can’t love anyone romantically. 
And then I say that as long as I can love at all, there is nothing too screwed about that.

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the cliché I could never understand in ‘detective dramas’ – 
spouses leaving them like they didn’t know about their profession when they were marrying them.

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I do not really like staged photography. 
I like capturing one real chance moment. 
Because I believe it tells a better story. 

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a grain of wisdom from a commuter’s bag on Tokyo morning train:
(it likely has an author, but the bag didn’t disclose)

“Not everything that you face can be changed. But nothing can be changed until you face it.”

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Can’t say I find art involving manipulated human bodies aesthetically pleasing or interesting in any way.

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Whenever I get too tangled, too overwhelmed with everything that clings to me and tries to drown me, I tread back.
I may not have enough memories,… but I still have music I listened to 15 years ago. I have series I used to watch over and over, alone in the world. 
I cling to the feeling of ‘back then’ that comes back with the old stories I re-read. 
So I put them on the background and try to rewind my mind into that state in the past. When the air was clearer and my bones were lighter. 
And, just maybe, then I’ll have enough clarity to deal with the present.

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The mistakes I sometimes have to correct after translators often make me think that they do this on purpose… just to make my working day a little more fun )

  • how big and busy that beard is!
  • might be both of our densities.
  • If that is the case, when how where you born with it?
  • However, If you fish for that world to
  • Fight with an awareness of facing from here on out!
  • Next, all of your atats will fall
  • Advancing face will bring us into contact
  • very same mare of strange-coloured eyes
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I have a seriously bad relationship with time. 
Bigger problems aside, 
I feel like I need at very least there to be 60 hours in a day to not feel like I’m being dragged by my hair through the mud and can’t manage anything or catch up to anything. Or like, y’know, take a breath?

And it’s not like ‘slow’ was ever particularly an adjective to describe me… But I just really, really, can’t deal with how fast the time is flowing.