Title: Reed succumbs to literary cliche
Product review: A beautiful woman murdered, of course. A Yale-educated DA running for office, of course. It seems that Barry Reed is more concerned with looks and education rather than plot and dialogue. In this novel where everyone seemed to have "fresh, Nordic features," Reed focused more on the characters than the story. The only bright spot was attorney Dan Sheridan, who is a down-to-earth, broken-nose kind of player. With each description (which could have been stolen from a soap-opera script) was the educational background of each character. Character description is important, mind you, but not the solitary component of the work. I don't believe that a woman who has been lying face down dead in a marshy area for hours is the most beautiful woman the medical examiner had ever seen. It just doesn't happen. And neither did this book. Barry Reed should read Robert K. Tanenbaum, whose characters are believable and enhance the plot, not replace it
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