Albatross by Dave SaariMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was quite an interesting tale about golf; spoilt, rich grown-up kids; sexual activity; and – oh yes! a murder investigation. The investigation involved two amateur private detectives, Trey and his mother, Madeline, and an FBI agent, named Sybil, who was known to Trey back in his school and college days. I thought it was only ‘quite’ interesting because about a third to a half of the book could have been left out altogether.
Although in my younger days I played and enjoyed a lot of golf, there was far too much golf detail in the book. At the same time the amount of detail about the travel routes and roads around Grand Marais in Minnesota, USA, was also overdone and felt like it was padding out the story. The ‘sexy’ descriptions of all the female characters throughout the book; plus exposition of any and all, intimate behaviour between Trey and Sybil was quite unnecessary for this reader. That last observation of mine may well apply to anyone over the age of twenty five these days. Such accounts of intercourse could certainly be titillating to many teenaged ‘younger adults’ I suppose.
The unfortunate acronym ‘MILF’ and several other idiomatic terms often occurred in the dialogue during the various conversations between characters. This usually adds a sense of reality and authenticity to a story, and so can be quite understandable and acceptable. However, outside of the locale, or even the USA, it may confuse readers, like me, who reside where the words do not occur - even in their lexicon or thesaurus should curiosity be strong enough to seek their meaning.
There was not enough interest or intrigue in the murder mystery, aside from my negative points above, for me to give Albatross more than 2 or 3 stars. The kindle edition that I read was not user-friendly. It had a table of contents that did not work at all, and was at the end of the book in the back matter rather than the front matter, where it would have been most useful. Every chapter I clicked took me to the list of previous books by Dave Saari. So probably, some more editing, and/or beta-reading is still needed for the novel’s re-publication.
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