Customer Reviews

Prime Evil

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

 

 

I am in full accord with a previous reviewer who said this book was excruciatingly stupid. It is of extremely low caliber for an otherwise talented suspense writer. The story is implausible and it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Good question -- why didn't the protagonist just leave Bramble Farm if she had bad feelings about the place? Her host was a bizarre, quasi-gothic figure who maintained he hid parts of his wife's novel so the protaganist could find it and edit it for the market. The whole story is just a foray into foolishess. It is really not good.

I'm really not picky when it comes to thrillers, but this one seems to have no redeeming features whatsoever. I only finished the novel out of stubbornness -- it was truly awful. Kelman's favorite way to create suspense is simply to describe situations as "terrifying" --- quite arbitrarily. It was never clear to me why the heroine's experience at Bramble Farm was so "terrifying," and I don't know why she didn't just leave the annoying place once it started getting to her. The plot concerns a brilliant writer who is incapacitated after a stroke and who hides parts of a manuscript, which the heroine is editing, around the house. Kelman's narratives include many excerpts from this "literary masterpiece." These pretentious passages are even worse than Kelman's own tedious prose! All in all, Prime Evil reminds me of one of those really bad suspense novels from the 1970s. My advice: skip it.

Worse than the "Famous Five" books I read as a child. Completely agree with previous 2 reviews. The writing style is laboured and verbose, the plot bordering on insane, the sub-plots even more so... a handsome doctor falls in love with a heavily pregnant woman, who continues to stay in a decrepit old country mansion with a malevolent atmosphere that frightens her while she edits a book by a stroke victim which happens to be the most eagerly anticipated piece of fiction in the world? Yeah - THAT sort of thing ALWAYS happens in real life! Do yourself a favor. Take these three reviews on board and don't bother reading this book. I have certainly been put off reading any of Ms Kelman's other works.

If you really like suspenseful books, then you will love this Judith Kelman book. The book takes you through Erica Phillips' life at Bramble Farm. She is an unwed, single, and pregnant woman that is trying to build a good future for her unborn baby and herself. In the process, she finds herself involved in a evil web of deceit and greed. In the book, you meet really interesting characters that you will love and hate all at the same time. This is an excellent who-done it book that keeps you reading. For those of us that love books that you can not predict the ending of, this is your book. I could not put the book down because I had to know what kind of powers Bramble Farm had over all of the characters. The book leads you down many possible avenues before finally revealing all of the secrets of this mysterious place called, "Bramble Farm". I recommend this book to everyone that that enjoys a good suspensful read. Excellent book!

After reading previous reviews I find myself in the minority here, but I enjoyed this book. Yes, there were some pretty big holes in the plot and our heroine, Erica had to be..well naive at best, but more like an idiot to not see what kind of danger she was in, but the book kept up a good pace, was easy to read and held my interest throughout. The villain was painfully obvious and the hero...Was there a hero? Jim? No, not a hero, just a boyfriend was pretty useless when the time of crisis arrived. On the other hand, Erica was at least pretty competent as the heroine when it came to solving problems. Her problem was that she was lousy at anticipating problems from clues that were slapping her in the face. I think my biggest issue with this work was that at times the author took to showing excerpts from the old lady writer's work. It always seems risky to build up a character as a great writer then put that character's words in the story. That seems to open yourself up. Are these really the thoughts and works of a gret writer? The bottom line here is that this is a pretty decent book if you're looking for a quick read and you are willing to suspend your own rationality for a while.