Here is a great review of my novels, from Albert Bekus, Professor Emeritus, English Dept., Austin Peay University.
Mike:
I hope you’re planning the third segment to complete the trilogy. Misty and Delany certainly have too much potential to let them live happily ever after. Misty is intriguing. You have kept her well guarded—which feeds the reader’s imagination. We want to know her better in a third installment. And Delaney too with his fragmented morality.
Delaney’s narration is remarkable. As narrator he is precise, observant, believable. We trust him. As a character he has another personality, one that sometimes surprises us, intrigues us, an enigma. A hero/antihero?
From the very beginning your novels move naturalistically in the American literary tradition of Theodore Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy.” But with a twist. . . not the inevitable tragic ending for the protagonist that naturalism demands (consider also “The Great Gatsby”).
Good plot (the story’s the thing), good characterization, and excellently realistic dialogue, which could make or break a novel The music and Zodiac motifs throughout–the latter also an element of naturalism—give the reader a “unified familiarity” as the plot progresses.
All kinds of great stuff here, Mike. There’s nothing not to appreciate and much to discuss.
Take care, Al
