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Title: Starts off with promise, anyway.
Review: Iris Johansen, Body of Lies (Bantam, 2002)I picked this up after having the first two chapters sent to me on the chapteraday mailing list and reluctantly allowing myself to get intrigued. The first chapter really does pack a wallop. I just with the rest of the book could have carried out the promise.It doesn't, unfortunately. After the first chapter comes long, drawn-out setup that is in no way justified by the payoff. Robert Parker does the same thing, but he does it in about a third of the number of pages per novel used by Johansen. The woman could use a few lessons in tight prose and how it heightens tension in a novel. But this one's a lost cause; by the time her protagonist finally gets around to reconstructing the face on the skull, will the reader still care? Not this one. (zero)
