Customer Reviews

Ocean City M.D.

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book has a reasonably engaging story line, but the author's inconsistent style and the abysmal editing made the book laughable. Literally. Out loud. It's apparent that Mr. Croft has a fertile imagination, but perhaps should spend more time on writing mechanics and/or should fire his editor. If you can get past the glaring grammatical mistakes, however, you may enjoy the plot. It would make an interesting screenplay -- a format which precludes sentence fragments and dangling participles.

This book is so poorly edited (I am giving the author the benefit of the doubt here!), that it is actually a chore to read it. There are glaring grammatical, spelling and continuity errors on almost every page. I read a lot of books and have never seen a worse editing job!

Fantastic book and a great story. I love the beach and this book made me feel I was right there living it with the characters. Would make a great movie!

A resident of Ocean City MD, I enjoyed the book's verisimilitude about the town, its geography and character, the moods of the bay, etc. -- mostly if not 100% accurate. Plus, you gotta like a protagonist, Billy Lee, among whose loves are flounder fishing, a beat up little Boston Whaler boat and a balky old outboard motor, and who lives in a scruffy trailer with spare posessions including his "favorite and only necktie."

The yarn author Croft spins is imaginative and interesting and his language is economical and crisp and would normally have carried the tale along nicely. But the book suffers from awful editing. There are dozens and dozens of spelling, typographical, grammatical and usage errors and awkwardnesses, virtually one every few pages, sometimes several on one page. Examples: "Jeep's" for "Jeeps", "wastein" time for "wastin' time", wretch" for "retch", "aptly know has" for "aptly known as", "shot gun" for "shotgun", "door way" for "doorway", "dead bolt" for "deadbolt", "oceans" for "ocean's", "their" for "there", and on and on. Dangling participles and whole disjointed sentences, e.g., "Slowly inching his way down the hallway toward the warehouse door." Inconsistent usage: local practice here refers to Ocean City's main tourist attraction, the Boardwalk, with a capital "B" but Mr. Croft refers to it in different places as both boardwalk and Boardwalk.

These dozens and dozens of goofs arrested the reader's eye and definitely interfered with enjoyment of the book. Indeed, they were so frequent that at first I thought they were some sort of a pun on the local language a la Anthony Burgess' inventive language in "A Clockwalk Orange". But not so, alas. Wherever the fault may lie - Tom Croft himself, his editors or publisher - the flaws ruin what otherwise would have been an engaging read.

As to Jill, she's fundamentally ambivalent. I incline to the view that she did finally come around to carrying a torch for the estimable Billy Lee. -- Tom Longo in Ocean City, MD

Like all the other reviews, I think this is a fantastic thriller. I gave it to my girl friend to read and she loved it to. I'd never heard of the book before last weekend. I picked it up at a book signing in of all places Ocean City, Md. I didn't expect it to be much of a book but I was blown away by it. It's fantastic!. I'll stick with the group that thinks Jill's a tramp (my girl friend think she's an innocent victim).

This is one of the best books I've read in years. I loved the story but what I really liked about the book was how it was written. To many authors write books that are 400 and 500 pages long and all they do is fill them with miscellaneous garbage to pad the book. Not this book. It was written real tight and jumps from one place to the other without a lot of extra uncessary garbage. I wish other people would write like this!. Jill is a tramp!

My daughter brought this book home from college. She gave it to her father who raved about it. Our two sons also read it and they raved about it. I rarely read a book. I started it and could not put it down. My daughter showed me the reviews in here after we argued about Jilll. I think she is basically a good person dealing surviving in a bad situation. My daughter thinks she's a horrible person.

This novel grabbed from the very beginning and carried me along through to the end. I thought the main character, Billy Lee was a fantastic anti-hero. He was the type of person I could really identify with. I wish the book had been longer. I've been looking for another book written by this same person but have been unable to find one. I was, however, somewhat disturbed at some of the other reviews. I do not see how anyone can possibly believe that Jill was not a totally demented and evil person.

Enjoyed O.C. M.D. immensely. A friend loaned it to me but I recommend you buy it, it is worth every penny. Reminds me of a Stuart Woods book and is as good as any summer read out there. Billy Lee is a real looser whom we all feel like at some time or other. Jill is a sly witch with a heart. The stuff in the cornfield is as original and tense as it gets. Many books feel like they have a forced ending but this one pulls you through. Enjoy!

Ocean City M.D. is just the ticket for a great summer weekend. Don't miss this one!