I read a very brief blurb about Woman with a Gun in USA Today. Because USA Today doesn’t often tout mysteries, the blurb made me think its author was a new writer who managed to turn out a very clever whodunit. By golly, I wanted to read that! So I did. While the story was compelling and while I read it through in no time, I have to say that it was very poorly written. Imagine my surprise when I researched the author, Phillip Margolin, and learned that he has more than a dozen legal thrillers under his belt. So perhaps the blurb in the newspaper was a tip of the hat honoring his past prowess?? It certainly couldn’t be praising this project.OK, so here is the story told in the book – an aspiring novelist sees a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph depicting a woman in a wedding dress, standing on the shore at night, facing the sea. Behind her back, she holds a gun. The news article that had accompanied the photo tells that the bride’s husband was shot dead on their wedding night and you guessed it, the gun in the photo is the murder weapon. Is the bride the murderer? Unfortunately, the ten year old case has never been solved. The aspiring author decides to write a novel that would answer all the questions about the case, though of course, fictionally. But oh my goodness, in researching the story, she manages to solve the cold case! She also manages to fall in love! And it all happens just about as fast as I made it happen here. Yuch! Bad writing!So why did this book win a blurb in the “New and Noteworthy” section of USA Today? I went back and researched it and here is what I found. The blurb in the newspaper gave this “buzz” about the book. “Margolin…deliver(s) one of his cleverest cases,” says Kirkus Reviews. When I then looked up the full Kirkus Review I found a lengthy book description with this conclusion, “The Chinese box puzzle takes some getting used to, but it allows Margolin to deliver one of his cleverest cases while concealing his principal flaw—paper-thin characters—beneath constant shifts in time and case.” I am saddened that USA Today only gave me half of this sentence. And I am glad that the Kirkus opinion and mine are the same: compelling story; poorly written. A photograph of a woman in a wedding dress holding a gun becomes the inspiration for Stacy Kim, wannabee novelist, for a new book. She leaves her boring job in a law firm and moves to the West. The woman in the photograph is a suspect in an unsolved murder. Stacy begins talking to the various people connected with the murder in an effort to get "background" for her book.While I enjoyed the book and would read others by the author.
Do You like book Woman With A Gun CD: A Novel (2014)?
Fast, engaging read. Terrific characters. Margolin never disappoints.
—aye
