Customer Reviews

China Gate: An International Thriller

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The premise of this story is interesting, and in the hands of a competent writer, or one less lazy, it could have been the basis for a good thriller. Instead, we get flabby, imprecise prose full of malapropisms, grammatical mistakes, misspellings, tortured syntax, and the clumsiest attempt at rendering a regional dialect I've ever encountered. We get "characters" who are nothing more than plot devices--nothing unusual in that--but the author failed to apply even the microscopically thin veneer of humanity that's customary in genre fiction. We get situations so comically preposterous that it's difficult to believe any writer would insult his audience's intelligence with them. We get a total lack of verisimilitude because the author apparently couldn't be bothered to do any research, and lacks a vivid enough imagination to make the things he just makes up believable. I'm embarrassed for the author, his editor, and his publisher for producing this tripe, and for myself because I actually read most of it. This book is a strong contender for the title of The Worst Book I've Ever Read. At 99 cents, the price was at least 99 times as much as it's worth.