Customer Reviews

Homicide: White Butterflies

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Maybe because I went and read the third novelisation first I messed up, but I found the writing to be OK at its best and brutal at its worst.

Twice in only a couple of pages the following type of passage popped up:

You are weird, thought Pembleton. "You are weird," Pembleton said to Bayliss.

If he went and said it, why waste time writing that he thought it first?

Also, dialects and street slang are much more effective on screen than on paper.

The plot was interesting and would make a pretty good 1-hour show. But when I'm reading I want something more involved than a 1-hour show, otherwise I'd have plunked myself in front of a television.

This book is wonderful! It reads like an episode, heavy on the drama and light with the humor. It goes deep into the thoughts of the detectives, the thoughts of the killer and etc. Eventhough, the cover photo is misleading...I recommend it highly!

White Butterflies is the third novel in the Homicide set. It's a fast read and above average for a serialization of a television show. If you're a Homicide fan it gives you a chance to spend a little more time with the Baltimore detectives.

It must be remembered that the book is a tie-in, not its own story. If one looks at it as an individual novel, one is left with a misinterpretation of the author's intentions. The intentions were to provide an episode that would tie in with a one-hour TV series. That doesn't leave much time for development. The whole thing was meant as fun...

For its genre, "White Butterflies" really isn't that bad... It can't be easy to do a tie-in, especially one for a series as complicated as H:lots. The characters in Homicide, are quirky, just like people in real life, not one-dimensional or predictable. I can understand how Lewis's scouse would have caused a bit of confusion and might have allienated some readers (the verb comment comes to mind). However, when I noticed it, I tried to say it aloud, and when spoken, it makes much more sense.

I only gave it a 4 because there were too much romaniticism in certain spots like, "her long red hair tumbling over her shoulders like dawnlight over the bonny hills and dales of her ancestral Ireland". That was a bit too much. If Munch had said it while being sarcastic, then it would have made sense, but he didn't. Speaking of Munch, Preisler captured his intonation very well, as well as Bayliss'.

Final thoughts: a great read if you're bored and Homicide longing on the weekends. It's for fun, not a serious litterary work.

That seems to be a recurring theme in today's crime fiction--the evidence isn't really obvious, but somebody saw a homeless person nearby. This one's definitely the tail-end charlie of the three "Homicide" books, in more than just chronology. Plus, I think Preisler didn't take enough care here with the cops on the case. He has Munch as pretentious and condescending here as he is in the new "Law & Order: Special Crimes Unit" series, when he isn't really quite that bad in the "Homicide" series overall. Plus, he continues to depict Giardello as a looming, thunderous presence--I've always read the guy as avuncular. And in this book, he tends to exaggerate street slang by black characters to the extent to where it might alienate a balck reader. He even has Lewis saying "hey, yo, whassup?" to Kellerman in one scene, when the guy is several years too old for that vintage of slang.