Undaunted by William Manchee
Summary: As a youngster Stan Turner is determined to become an attorney. He is mysteriously forewarned that the path to his dream will be difficult and fraught with danger. At every turn, Stan is confronted with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, yet he pushes forward, undaunted by the unknown forces that seek to derail him. Forced into the United States Marines by a vicious twist of fate, Stan leaves his wife and family and reports for duty. On his first day he unwittingly befriends a serial killer and soon finds himself charged with the murder of his drill sergeant. Aided by a lustful nurse who wants him and a journalist who wants his story, Stan desperately searches for the actual killer to prove his innocence.
Review: A decent mystery read, but the main character really irked me.
The author provides a lot of background information at the beginning of the story. It takes a few chapters to get to the actual story. It felt very unnecessary and it takes longer to get to the actual story. Also, within the first few chapters, there is a chapter that is told from another viewpoint. At first I thought that it was the author many years later, but it turns out later that it is a reporter. Later in the story, there is another chapter told from the reporter again and I was able to tell it was from the viewpoint of the reporter. Those two chapters should have been marked and caused a lot of confusion at first.
Stan is a jerk. I really hated his character. He has two women who want him and he somehow falls in love with one in a few days (and I thought you were happily married). He doesn't sleep with the women and they call him a great guy because he didn't cheat on his wife, but I call him a hypocrite! He constantly talks about how he shouldn't be doing this, but he didn't want to disappoint the women or disobey orders (and those orders weren't orders!). The mystery was decently intriguing and had a few twists, but I couldn't enjoy this novel because I wanted to strangle Stan.
Rating:
Recommendation: It's hard for me to recommend this book because of my strong dislike of the main character, but I suppose big fans of military fiction and mysteries might enjoy this.
The author provides a lot of background information at the beginning of the story. It takes a few chapters to get to the actual story. It felt very unnecessary and it takes longer to get to the actual story. Also, within the first few chapters, there is a chapter that is told from another viewpoint. At first I thought that it was the author many years later, but it turns out later that it is a reporter. Later in the story, there is another chapter told from the reporter again and I was able to tell it was from the viewpoint of the reporter. Those two chapters should have been marked and caused a lot of confusion at first.
Stan is a jerk. I really hated his character. He has two women who want him and he somehow falls in love with one in a few days (and I thought you were happily married). He doesn't sleep with the women and they call him a great guy because he didn't cheat on his wife, but I call him a hypocrite! He constantly talks about how he shouldn't be doing this, but he didn't want to disappoint the women or disobey orders (and those orders weren't orders!). The mystery was decently intriguing and had a few twists, but I couldn't enjoy this novel because I wanted to strangle Stan.
Rating:
Recommendation: It's hard for me to recommend this book because of my strong dislike of the main character, but I suppose big fans of military fiction and mysteries might enjoy this.
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