The Innocent--Book Review

This is how you make a best seller.

Write an engaging first chapter.  In it, a good guy finds himself at a beer party and there is a fight and during the fight he stands up for a buddy and winds up killing another person at the party. He goes to jail for four years and comes out relatively unscathed, gets married in New Jersey to someone perfect who he met in Las Vegas one day and who, coincidentally, has moved to New Jersey.

Then add some characters and events.

A nun with breast implants gets murdered.  An adopted daughter searches for her birth mom and visits a stripper who was a pal of the stripper who had given up the daughter for adoption. The wife of the fellow who committed manslaughter says she is going to Boston on business but the manslaughterer gets a picture of her on his smartphone in a compromising position with another fellow.  She's not in Boston. Doesn't look like she is selling software.  Enter (1) a steamy looking private eye and (2) the daughter cop of a steamy mother whose father committed suicide.  Maybe, just maybe, Ms. Perfect wife in New Jersey has a past.  Hold your breath.

But that is not enough.

There's an fbi agent who has a thing for prepubescent girls; a conveniently placed baby sitter for the sister in law of the manslaughterer; the mother of the victim of the manslaughterer who rendezvous with the manslaughterer in a museum; the father of the manslaughter victim who is not crazy about his wife rendezvousing with the killer of his son; a couple of goofball hitmen; a wino with courage and loyalty; a strip joint named--I do not exaggerate--the Eager Beaver; and an ending that ties things up nicely that could not happen in fifty million years.

This book is a fast read and is also, in my grandfather's parlance, ridickalus.  My recommendation is that if you like to read and want something a little beyond meaningless, reading this is not a bad way to spend a weekend.  If you want something that is two notches above ridickalus, I would pass.

The author is laughing all the way to the bank.