Patricia Cornwell - Isle of Dogs

Review by showhost oct 2010
I can sum this book up in one word - Garbage
I am just soooo glad I read this book before I went on holiday because I would have resented the room it would have taken up in my suitcase!

It is billed as a 'comic romp' on Amazon - well I must have had my sense of humour surgically removed - it got so awful, you had to laugh or cry! Actually, I did notice that there were no comments from the press or literary media on the front cover - or the back - I wonder why......Has Cornwell gone to the dogs???
I threw it on the floor after 130 pages (don't know how I got that far!)but from what I read the general characters and synopsis are:
Judy Hammer, chief of Police of Virginia, Andy Brasil reporter turned state Trooper, and the Governor of virginia, who is practically blind and senile (reminds me of Boss Hogg in the dukes of hazard).
The Governor elected Judy Hammer to the post of chief of Police because she was a woman and he had to be seen to be doing the right thing by the equal rights department. Consequently, he is never in when she rings.
Andy Brasil, State Trooper, goes off for a years sabatical to learn about archealogy and anthropology so he can come back and secretly write articles under the pseudonym 'Trooper Truth' about the police and crime in the state- the only person who knows his true identity is chief Hammer.

The addled, nearly blind governor of Virginia confusedly launches a speed-trap program on isolated Tangier Island, whose dim, eccentric, interbred residents (they are like something out of 'Deliverance') take great offence to. They decide to take the visiting dentist hostage (the dentist who has been providing gross treatment for the residents, taking out teeth, putting in dentures which don't fit and claiming big fees). Their dialogue is in a stupid backward format which you get fed up trying to understand and such inconsequential dialogue anyway!
Chief Hammer's dog is kidnapped and there is a baby faced killer on the loose and a gang of street-stupid thugs gunning for Hammer and Brazil.
All this stupid lot are the story and it just scoots from one to the other with no direction and no sense..
The book jacket describes the novel as "Satisfying storytelling with an intoxicating dash of comedy". It was neither satisfying, intoxicating nor funny. I am just sooo glad I didn't pay a shop price for this rubbish, the 50p at the charity shop was bad enough!

One of the many reviews on 'Amazon': A dogs breakfast, A friend gave me this book, in an effort to get it off of their bookshelf. Unfortunately, having said "It can't be that bad" and read it, I can assure you that it really is just not that good.