Review of The Face of Fear

[ARH ComiX]

[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, The Face of Fear.]

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1 out of 5 stars

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A young rich girl is kidnapped on a ferry in the city of Port Jefferson. The abduction is investigated by the FBI, but two local cops get on the case trying to solve the mystery on their own. One of the cops has the idea of asking his girlfriend to write an article for a local paper showing how the crime could have been committed, and once he re-enacts the crime on the ferry trying to find clues to solve the kidnap, a series of murders start to occur, calling the attention of the media that starts calling the killings, The Face of Fear crimes.


The novel tries to pass as a murder mystery that guides the readers along for the journey, dropping clues along the way, so the reader can try to guess who the murder is. It is clear since the beginning that the author’s goal is to make the reader feels like a participant in the story. It is like we, the readers, should follow the lead cop in his investigation as the mystery unravels.


The premise of the book is good and has potential, but unfortunately, the execution is poorly done and leaves a lot to be desired. An extremely long book with over 400 pages of a story that could easily be told in less than 100. The distracting errors with grammar, punctuation, and consistency are aplenty. And the lack of understanding from the author about how to tell a story shows clearly in this failed attempt to write a mystery novel.


It is clear from page one that the author has never heard of character development, story structure, or how to write interesting and effective dialogues. The basic three acts structure of how to write a story is not even near this book. The story feels like a long, uninterrupted sequence of unrelated events and dialogues that have zero or near zero impact in the plot.


The characters in this book are thrown at you, one by one, without any background, a reason for them to be in the story, their motivations, their personal stakes, or even, in most cases, a mere description of how they look like. My lack of empathy for the kidnaped girl at the beginning of the story is so strong that I could care less if she died or were rescued. I simply didn’t know who she was, what she was like, or why she was kidnapped, so it was hard to feel anything for her. The same goes for the two main protagonists. Two buddy cops that for no reason and with zero stakes in the whole situation resolve to investigate the crime on their own. Another familiar cliché of cops acting against authority to make the FBI look bad. One of the cops, the only character in this book I can actually remember the name, is Bud. Yet I don’t remember his name because he has any interesting characteristics or had compelling participation or impact in the story. I remember his name because, for each sentence he spoke, he had an F-word thrown in just for good measure. I’m not a moralist, nor I am offended by swearing or offensive language, but when you read dialogues where every other word spoken is an F-this, F-that… Then it gets annoying.


The book drowns you in interminable descriptions of local business and restaurants in the city of Port Jefferson. For many times, it seems that you are reading a boring commercial for the city or the menu of a local restaurant. The incessant mention of the restaurant Z Pita and his owner and the myriad of plates served in the restaurant are tedious to read over and over and over. It is not by coincidence that the author thanks the restaurant owner in his notes. It seems like the restaurant had a deal with the author to be featured in the book. Not only the author describes the place and his culinary achievements a ridiculous number of times, but he goes to the length of mentioning local patrons on his book by name!


It is clear that the author is a native of Port Jefferson and has lived there his whole life. His passion for the city and its local police department shows. As the author says himself in his introduction to this book, he spent many years developing this story in his head as he probably walked around the city. The problem I see with that is that the author confuses being descriptive and thorough with excessive and boring added information that has zero contribution to the plot. Another problem that plagues the story from beginning to end is the interminable number of unnecessary dialogues throughout the book and the numerous number of names, not characters, but names that the author throws at you that have absolutely no impact on the plot.


At about 80% of the book in, when the plot should be reaching its climax and the reader should be at the edge of the seat about to uncover the mystery, the author spends a full whole page describing the beagles of a local restaurant and how many calories each one has. It is absurd the amount of wasted time he spends developing completely unrelated dialogues and scenes, like if trying to extend the story, so we can feel he is writing a real novel.


I had to read this book in one seating. It took me two full days and a great part of my nights to get through the whole thing. The reason is simple. If I stopped halfway, I would never pick up this book again.


The story concludes, as expected. The author wants to be clever and be smarter than the audience, so he goes out of his way so you can never guess who the real criminals are. But the end winds up as nothing more than an attempt to show how clever and creative the author is. The problem is that to achieve that—as I have seen so many others trying to achieve the same thing before, and failing miserably—he forces the plot to conform to his clever ending, rather than actually making the story make sense or revealing a great unexpected reason for the crimes to have occurred. After the great mystery is solved and we finally find out who the bad guys are, the author spends several pages with exposition trying to explain why the bad guys are who they are and why they did what they did.

I could not in good conscience, recommend this book to anyone. It is one of the worst samples of bad “everything” I have seen in a long time.


I rate this book 1 out of 5 stars.