Customer Reviews

The Dirty Secrets Club (Jo Beckett)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This novel kept me turning the pages so rapidly that I didn't actually stop to analyse the story. Which is probably a good thing: I'm not convinced that the various elements hang together well enough to provide a totally satisfying whole. Does it matter? Well, not to me. I was looking for an escapist novel and this book delivered.

There is a lot of action in this novel: not always coherent and not always believable. That will matter to some readers, and ordinarily it matters to me. But sometimes, it is good to suspend reality and just hop onto the rollercoaster.

Jo Beckett is a forensic psychiatrist who profiles victim's lives in order to try to help solve their deaths. Lieutenant Amy Tang calls Jo Beckett to the crime scene after a high speed pursuit in San Francisco ends with four people dead and five injured. So, why did Callie Harding drive her car through a bridge railing? What is the Dirty Secrets Club, and what can Jo do to try to prevent what appear to be a related series of murder/suicides by high profile people? Jo herself looks to be an interesting character as do many of the other `good guys' in this novel.

This was the first Meg Gardiner novel I've read, and it probably won't be the last. I'm intrigued without (yet) being totally hooked.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Like a lot of readers, I decided to read Meg Gardiner's work at the recommendation of Stephen King, who has described her as "just as good as Michael Connelly" and the next "superstar of suspense." I've now read two of Gardiner's books, and I now wonder if King and I are reading the same author.

Gardiner is certainly a talented wordsmith, but her plots are so outlandish that I find myself rolling my eyes in disbelief. At least in CHINA LAKE, her debut novel, she had a likable main character and a good sense of pacing. But in THE DIRTY SECRETS CLUB, her most recent standalone novel, she offers neither.

The title of THE DIRTY SECRETS CLUB pretty much explains the plot: it involves a group of rich and powerful individuals who decide to share their dirty laundry with one another. Why they are stupid enough to do this is not convincingly explained. Unsuprisingly, someone begins blackmailing members of the group, many of whom start dying shortly thereafter. It is up to forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett, Garidner's heroine, to get to the bottom of all this mayhem.

There is very little about THE DIRTY SECRETS CLUB that I liked. The plot is languidly paced, and there are very few suspenseful scenes. Beckett is a bland, cookie-cutter type of heroine that I felt little affection for. The supporting characters mainly consist of stereotypes, and most of their dialog is flat and trite.

The plot of THE DIRTY SECRETS CLUB also contains a lot of silly events and coincidences. For example, the main villain is in police custody in a certain scene, only to have a major earthquake strike the city at precisely the right moment! The lights in the room then black out entirely, and he's able to conveniently slip out in the darkness. He immediately runs down the nearest stairwell, and just happens to run into another character (walking upstairs by himself, of course) that he has a long-standing vendetta against! And so on. If you have no problem believing such an implausable chain of events, then you may just enjoy this book. For me, it was simply too much bad and sloppy plotting to swallow in one sitting.

If you want to try Meg Gardiner, my advice is to try CHINA LAKE. That novel was a mixed bag, but it was loads better than this misfire.

A series of strange deaths requires forensic psychologist Jo Beckett to delve into a world hidden beneath San Francisco's psyche where she will discover the tie that mentally binds these victims together. They were all members of the Dirty Secrets Club, a place where nothing was too shocking, indeed, perhaps some things were not shocking enough, to confess. As her frenetic, yet methodical, quest to end the terror continues, Jo finds herself an unwilling member of the club, and thus, a potential victim. Now, she's fighting not only for the dead and for those who might join them, but to save herself as well.

**** Raw tension undergirds almost every page of this gripping thriller that takes you into a twisted maze of psychological suspense. Thanks to shows like Bones or series like Patricia Cornwall's, we are familiar with forensics, but I did not know about the psychiatric aspect of the science. It is by far more fascinating, making this a series that has greater potential than Kay Scarpetta's to seize the reader's imaginations and keep them up at night with all the lights on full force. ****

I am really struggling to figure out how other reviewers found this book to be such a page turner. I bought this book on the strength of the user reviews that I read here at Amazon and to say I was disappointed would be putting it lightly. The most disappointing part of reading the book was that there was never a moment of intensity, suspense, thrills - just nada, nothing!!

I'll start off with a discovery about the Kindle version of the book. Another reviewer noted that the Kindle version does not have the same page breaks in the chapter to show you that the author is changing subjects. There is that issue along with other formatting problems in the Kindle version and that is no fault of the author's. I actually emailed Kindle support and they are forwarding those findings on to the publisher, so hopefully that issue will be corrected for future readers. (I have read many Kindle books and have never seen that issue before.)

Now, on to the story. The one positive that I can give the author is that she has obviously done her research on different fields from psychiatry to para-jumper research and rescue missions, as well as the other "jobs" that are introduced to the story. She is obviously very intelligent and I can appreciate that in an author. However, that's where the positives stop.

**** CAUTION - POSSIBLE SPOILERS ****

I was truly baffled by how there is a secret club of people with dirty secrets who are supposedly willing to die to save their secret, but then they share the secret with anyone who's willing to listen. It was bizarre that a character kills himself in hopes that no one finds out his secret, but then he reveals his secret in his suicide note. Another woman reveals her secret to the main character, but fears that she'll release the secret to the police. Why join a secret club if you'll reveal your secret so easily??

On top of that, the secrets that are revealed don't necessarily have the type of mystique that you would think someone would be willing to die in order for people not to find out about the secret. There was never a sense of "oh wow - really!!" when a major point was revealed in the story. It was always, "is that it" or "no big deal" or even "who cares". Not gripping at all and always anti-climatic.

In today's tv dramas such as Law & Order, C.I.S., etc. you find very clever criminals and very clever detectives. There wasn't much clever about anyone in this book. You find out all of the reasons why the bad guy is doing bad from long and tired dialog delivered from the bad guy himself/herself. That's like the old tv Batman where the bad guy talks for 3 minutes explaining why they did everything they did to try to destroy Gotham. EVERY character does that in this book and its just - well, boring and unimaginative.

The main villains in this story (Perry and Skunk) are as scary as Ernie and Bert from Sesame Street. After reading about menacing characters like Rimeriz in Evanovich's "One For The Money", The Gingerbread Man in Konrath's "Whiskey Sour" or even the first chapter of Koontz's "The Husband" - these 2 goons in this book are so boring as the bad guys that you almost wish the book would end much sooner than go on.

Another major issue with the story is the pacing. There were times when the story went on and on about how Jo's husband died or about chasing a monkey that I was thinking "ok, get on with it." I could point out other things, but I'll just leave it at the book was a decent story, but in order to be a thriller - you need thrills and this book had zero.

I would have given it one star, but its obvious the author is bright - the story and the secrets were not compelling at all.

I am one of those people who read Stephen King's recommendation in "Entertainment Weekly" regarding Meg Gardiner's work and had her first five paperbacks shipped across the pond because they were not available in the United States (and it never dawned on me to look north of the border instead of the other side of Atlantic to acquire them). The news that picking up "The Dirty Secrets Club," our first Gardiner novel in hardback, would mean the introduction of a new leading lady actually made sense to me because there are only so many times she could put Evan Delaney through the wringer without it becoming a bit much (besides, she had pretty much run out of family and friends to be threatened). Still, we do get a cameo from a major player in the other novels, so we are still firmly ensconced in Meg Gardiner's version of California.

Another type of person that I am is the type who takes the dust jacket off of a new book and put it someplace safe so that (a) nothing bad can happen to it and (b) I can avoid reading what the dust jacket has to say about the story in the book so that I can be surprised. On the basis of her first five novels I am going to read anything Gardiner wants to write, but for those who want to start here instead of with the other paperbacks I can simply introduce our heroine. Jo Beckett is a forensic psychiatrist, who is hired by the San Francisco Police Department to perform psychological autopsies when there is a question as to whether a death is a suicide or a murder. When a rather spectacular death takes place that appears to be a completely shocking suicide, Jo is called to the scene, never suspecting that she has just jumped aboard the tip of the iceberg. The idea of psychological autopsies should be enough of a hook for you, and the big bang opening you can discover when you read the book.

"The Dirty Secrets Club" strikes me as just asking to be adapted into a motion picture, although these days the best place for Gardiner's work might be on the small screen. However, the downside to this is that when everything hits the fan it is just too much of a cinematic contrivance for me. Not to say that is a bad cinematic contrivance as such things go, but that I expected better from Gardiner. Even at that point it was only a half-point deduction, and I was ready to round down because of the deus ex machina that pops up at the key moment, not so much to save the day, but to give our heroine a brief but necessary respite, which again was a bit too convenient for my taste. Fortunately the whole mystery of the Dirty Secret's Club is nice and complex and I like the way Jo unravels it. The sense of pacing remains the same as Gardiner's previous novels and the biggest change stylistically is that this time the story is not told in first person, which is disappointing only because one of the things I really loved about those other novels is that Evan Delaney is a kindred spirit in the wicked sense of humor department. The idea of a psychological autopsy is certainly interesting, and hopefully in future Jo Beckett novels Gardiner well delve into that fascinating process more before the non-stop action finale.

I was so excited to read this book. The plot sounded original and inventive and there are many positive reviews here. Sadly, none of it happened for me. I loved the idea of a forensic psychiatrist. How original. And the idea of a dirty secrets club was very intriguing.

The opening scene which I think was supposed to be thrilling and a shocking intro was just over the top and not realistic in my opinion. As the novel goes on it didn't improve much. The author clearly can write well. That is not the problem here. Usually when I read a book I give it like 75 pages and then if I just can't bear to pick it up I move on to another. That was the case with this one but it was well written and still seemed to be propelling forward just a little under the level of true excitement that I gave it 150 pages. Sadly, at that point I found the characters one dimensional. We knew a little about the life of Jo Becket, the forensic psychiatrist. But she was not a fully developed character. And the plot which had a few minor hits at possible suspense never gelled and just lost me.

Reviewers say this is an exceptional thriller with shocks and twists galore. I don't know where they were. Maybe they all popped up in the last half but a reader should not be boringly led on for half a novel before the action begins. I hate to trash a novel and that really isn't what I am doing here. I thought the idea had promise and feel that the writer can write as I said but I can in no way call this book a thriller. It certainly was not the worst book of the year as someone else said, just not the best from this author. The promised exciting suspenseful plot just did not happen.

It is very sad to pick up a book you highly anticipate reading just to be led nowhere. I leave it up to you to form your own opinion.

This is a good, solid entertaining mystery thriller with a unique premise and a few surprising twists.

Our heroine has a unique job as a forensics pyschiatrist, brought in to determine the cause and help prevent further suicide-murders that are happening every 48 hours by high-profile community members. The clues lead her to a high-stakes Dirty Secrets Club.

The premise, the unique job of the protaganist and the interesting turns the tale takes - all make it a just slightly above average thriller - despite occassionally stretching plausibility. I give it 3.25 stars.

I generally love Meg Gardiner's books...truly, I do. I am another person who got hooked on her writing after Stephen King wrote an article about "China Lake". But "The Dirty Secrets Club" is no "China Lake".

First and foremost, the premise of this book is ill-conceived and unbelievable. I won't get into what the Dirty Secrets Club is about in detail, but suffice it to say it's a vague cabal of young up-and-comers in San Francisco. I know what you're thinking: it must be a book about Google. But no, the story features a forensic psychologist, Dr. Jo Beckett, as she tries to unravel the reasons behind several mysterious deaths occurring in the city.

Dr. Beckett shares some characteristics with Gardiner's better-known character, Evan Delaney. Both are strong, intelligent women. However, the Beckett character never really seems to gel quite as much as Evan Delaney did. It might have been the long, drawn-out approach to Beckett's backstory that made me lose interest in her quickly. But regardless of how strong the lead character was or was not, there was simply no way to make up for an absolutely ridiculous premise once the story was set in motion.

I had never heard of Gardiner or of any of her books before I bought DSC. I just happened to notice Stephen King's praise on the cover, so I decided to buy it. It wasn't until later did I realize that King was referring to her Evan Delaney novels, and not this one.


I had a couple of problems with this book. First of all, the first chapter was confusing and silly, not exciting and thrilling. If I had read that in the store (which is sometimes how I decide whether to buy a book or not) I probably would have skipped it, or at least looked on Amazon for the reviews.

It did pick up after the first chapter, but I was never really engrossed in the story. I was mostly reading it hoping it would get better, and by the last 100 pages, I was just trying to finish it. I was never able to connect with the main character of Beckett, not disliking her, but just really couldn't care less about her. In fact, I didn't really care for any of the characters, and didn't find them to be believable.

The entire book moved very slow, it was at least 100 pages or more too long. Instead of being filled with exciting twists and turns, it seemed to be filled with confusing events. And unbelievable ones at that. I don't normally care if events are believable or not, Stephen King is my favorite author, but in a book that is trying to come across as believable, I expect a little bit more effort. If the rest of the book was better, I could forgive the far-fetched events and coincidences (as I have it other books, such as Tana French's The Likeness and Gillian Flynn's Dark Places). I had a problem with the whole premise of this story, if people were willing to die not to get have their secret exposed, why tell anyone in the first place? I don't think the reasons she gave were really plausible.

Overall the writing wasn't horrible, I just wasn't hooked. I most likely won't read any more of this series (unless reviews are better) but I do plan on trying China Lake before completely giving up on Gardiner, as you can see some talent in there. I would skip this one.

This is the first time I read about psychological autopsies and my very last. I don't know if this profession exist or not but the way is explained in the book is Boring. The plot has many mistakes and contradictions. You can skip this one.

The biggest mistake:

If you have a secret and you tell automatically is not a secret anymore and you'll depend on the one who listened to you.