TEST
Americans are fascinated with police drama. Books, movies and television have given us a surprising expertise in the conduct of criminal investigations. We know all the classic scenes: the interrogation of the suspects, the searching of the crime scene, sometimes the romance between the police officer and the suspect and, lastly, the arrest. A book that uses crime as its backdrop, and a police officer as a hero, needs to be at least moderately accurate. Unfortunately Sweet Honesty is not, and that is only the beginning of the flaws which plague this book.
The story opens with hapless kindergarten teacher, Samona Gray, jewelry shopping with her boyfriend, Roger. Soon it is obvious that Samona’s presence is nothing more than a ruse to get the jewelry store owner to open the display case. By the end of the scene, Roger is holding a gun to Samona’s head and Samona is desperately trying to keep Roger from strangling her to death. When Samona wakes up, Roger is gone and, she has been named chief suspect in the case. Hero Detective Derrick Lawson is assigned to go undercover, get close to Samona, and dig up the facts that prove her guilty.
Plotting errors alone are enough to make the most casual reader of Sweet Honesty balk. What are we to make of a book in which the police officer hero is assigned to a case based on his single marital status and lack of children? Is the author aware that this is illegal? Here is a list of just some of the other improbable events that plague Sweet Honesty:
- The hero working undercover makes up a heinous story about his father beating his mother to gain the heroine’s confidence. He never reveals the truth – nor apologizes for lying to her.
- The heroine’s home is ransacked and the police officer hero cleans the crime scene to help her out! No prints are taken.
- A murder suspect, detained by the police officer hero, is denied access to a lawyer when he asks for one.
- The police, including the hero, are so intimidated by a lawsuit by the victim’s husband that they harass a woman (the heroine) against whom they have almost no evidence.
But accuracy is only the first step needed to make a story like this worth reading. The story of an uncover police officer falling in love with the chief suspect is an old one. The characters and dialogue in a book like this must be fresh. If Sweet Honesty had been written in a clear compelling style with witty characters engaging in entertaining conversations, I could have forgiven any number of plot inconsistencies. But, instead of feeling the enticing pull of a love story, I found myself squirming in frustration.
Sweet Honesty is filled with clichés, grammatical errors and worn out phrasing. Samona and Derrick speak and think in figures of speech which may have never been original. After a hundred pages of reading flat and downright amateurish language I found myself itching to attack the book with a thesaurus. When Samona is cold she is, “so cold,” when she is tired she is “so tired.” Roger had seemed “so nice.” When the hero is sad he has “sad eyes”. Sloppy editing compounds the problem as in: “Sometimes Alex’s ego never failed to amaze her.”
The love story does have some rare pleasant moments which accounts for the “plus” in this grade. Derrick kisses Samona a few times. They make love once in a subtly described scene. The writing in these short, tasteful passages transcends anything else in the book. Unfortunately, when the hero and heroine are not kissing, they do and say such dull things, that I did not wish to spend any time with them.
It is always difficult to give any book a failing grade, but, in this instance, the quality of the writing made anything else impossible. Even if you are a great fan of police fiction, the inaccuracies and clichés that comprise Sweet Honesty render it unreadable.
Grade: F
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Subtle
Review Date: 30/04/99
Publication Date: 1999
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Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.