Review of The Honolulu Man

[Itz Savaga]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Honolulu Man" by Jack K Clymer.]

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4 out of 5 stars

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In The Honolulu Man, Jack Clymer II weaves a story around events that all seem to be connected in the end. Royce Atwater had a rocky background. He and his parents had moved to a small town in Louisiana when his father got laid off, which then led to him being a consistent heavy drinker. Royce bore the brunt of his father's heavy drinking because his father hit him all the time. One day, his mother died of a heart attack, and he pushed his dad off the stairs when he tried to hit him again that same day. All of these happened while he was only nine years of age. As an orphan, Royce moved to New York to stay with his uncle, who was a seamstress, and he taught him all about sewing and designing. As a grown man who was on the ladder to becoming a well-known designer, he had stabbed the manager who fired his uncle in the chest with a pair of scissors, and that led to a hunger within him to keep killing.

There was an increase in missing reports of young women and girls around certain areas at different times, and at all these places and times, budding designer Royce Atwater resided in those areas. He crossed paths with two dedicated police detectives, Joshua Jacobs, also known as JJ and Leilani Hayashi. Is this the end of the road for the serial killer who seemed interested in young females only?

The storyline was not really what I expected after reading the first chapter of this book, and I mean this in a positive light. It was interesting to look into the life of Royce Atwater. The author gave room for a lot of thinking to be done by the reader, especially with the one question I believed every reader would have in mind at some point, which was whether the nature of the death of Royce's parents had anything to do with him turning into a serial killer. This book was indeed a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of cliché stories making the rounds nowadays.

However, I did not like the author's omission of punctuation marks, especially apostrophes, meant to signify the beginning and the end of a conversation. The omission of punctuation marks blurred the lines between the events and what was actually being said by the characters. It made the book confusing to read. Also, the book started out a bit slow but paced well by the third chapter. There were also a lot of grammatical errors that could have easily been avoided if the book had been properly edited.

I rate The Honolulu Man by Jack Clymer II 4 out of 5. It had a nice plot but needed proper and better execution. That does not take away from the fact that the author wove a beautiful story in this book. However, the lack of apostrophes in a lot of conversations and the number of errors I found in the book are the reasons for the deducted star.

I recommend this book to readers interested in suspense and mystery tales. They would have a good time reading this story, save for a few low points in the book.

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The Honolulu Man
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[Nwoko E]

The storyline was not what I expected after reading the first chapter of the book, and I mean this in a positive light. Great review.

[NetMassimo]

This mystery novel seems interesting in several ways with twists and turns, so I hope the author does proper proofreading to avoid distractions while reading. Thank you for your great review!