Lust, Money and Murder – Mike Wells 2014 from Amazon Digital Services at 130 pages.
It’s very umm narrative. It’s all narration. There is very little dialogue and the style doesn’t show aspects of the characters, it simply tells you about them in a third person voice that seems as still and lifeless as the story it’s telling.
The tales starts off with a fairly well constructed prologue and I found that to be the most compelling part of this book. The rest of it is a lengthy narrative of Elaine Brogan, her complete life’s story about growing up in a poor neighborhood of Pittsburgh, her father, a construction worker stealing to put her through private school, her brief foray into a modeling school scheme, her father’s subsequent arrest, imprisonment and suicide, her finishing school and going to college for design with the ultimate goal of becoming a secret service agent and avenging her father’s death.
It tells us the story of what it takes to make an special agent and the trials and travails Elaine must overcome to become an agent. Then we follow her to her first posting in Montana. The story continues with a case of sexual harassment and her being reassigned to an office in Bulgaria, where, low and behold she meets the man of her dreams, her new boss, Nick is so much better than her old boss, so caring, so kind, so handsome. .. and yet the story is so bland. .. is creeps it’s was to a climatic ending that will resolve itself in the next book…
I feel perfectly comfortable waiting for the cliff notes version.
“We’ve got to get you laid, girl,” Ashley said frankly, when Elaine felt comfortable enough to talk openly with her. “What kind of guys do you like?”
“I don’t know,” Elaine said. “Strong, but kind.” Like her father.
“Strong, but kind,” Ashley said. “Hm. That eliminates about ninety-eight percent of the male population. What about looks? Tall, beefy, slim? Blonde, dark? Blue eyes—”
“I don’t know, Ashley. Does it matter? I just need somebody to get the job done.”
Ashley laughed. “Boy, you are jaded.”
Elaine had long given up on the idea that the process of losing her virginity would be a romantic event. It was simply a barrier she wanted to break—both literally and figuratively. She thought it would not only make her feel more comfortable with boys, but would make her feel like she was a complete, fully functioning female.