Official Review: Misdirection by Austin Williams

[roguexunited]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Misdirection" by Austin Williams.]

Misdirection by Austin Williams is a captivating police thriller that grabs your attention from the very beginning of the book. Like many other procedural crime fictions Williams uses the persona of the outsider as his main character. But unlike many of its predecessors Rusty Diamond truly feels like an amateur that is just learning the ropes of the trade instead of a savant consultant that is a connoisseur of everything that related to the supposedly alien police world. The Vegas ex-magician, although having some spectacular moments that allow him to be ahead from his opponents and allies, truly feels like a newcomer into the police world, that unlike other novels of the genre were the local cops seems incompetent or inefficient without the outsiders point of view, Williams’ are shown to be surprisingly capable, therefore the new arrival proves to be a asset to an already competent department.

Being the first book of the trilogy, Misdirection seems as a good introduction to the world of Rusty “The Raven” Diamond, retired performer. Although how his future relation with the Ocean City police department will be played out is still a mystery to me (because you cannot have your main character discovering a new corps on a daily bases.) This book still presents a good foundation to the world, the police department and the characters that will have future adventures. Leaving the reader with a couple of mysteries that hopefully will be revealed in further books of the trilogy. Nonetheless by introducing Misdirection as the first book of the series it does take away some of the suspense related to the survival of the main character, which bothered me, just a smidge, but I would have preferred not knowing that more books were to come.

In terms of pace I did feel that it was a bit of touch-and-go situation for a little while. Some chapters being action packed while other were very slow paced, but still in general it was very enjoyable. For this sort of crime fiction I am used to reading books that move incredibly fast leaving very little time for the reader to think of everything that is going on in the page. In this case with the slower chapters I found myself being able to piece more of the clues together and I found that the biggest part of the mystery resided in the trying to find out how Rusty would stop the bad guys than in the solving of the crime itself, which I find innovative.

In terms of the edition (in this case I had a epub) I thought that it was very enjoyable, one of the best, if not the best, that I’ve encountered in the short time I’ve been doing these reviews. Which pleased me to no end. Visually it is very pleasing, the font was a little too big for my taste, but that can easily be resolved on any eReader. But still it is better than finding yourself with an unreadable edition.

I was very pleased with the book and I highly recommend it, therefore I give it 4 out of 4 stars.

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[Kappy]

Good review. I would likely read this if it were available from my public library. In a nonfiction book I read a couple of years ago, Fooling Houdini, a grad student abandons his schooling to become a full-time magician. Good modern magicians must be well-educated not only in "magic," but also in physics, psychology, and statistics. A magician could become a great detective.