The Remorseful Day

Black Tide

Peter Temple

2/5 stars

9.7.2012 – 12.7.2012

This was my first Jack Irish thriller, by Peter Temple. And, I can safely say, that, this will be my last. This book was not interesting. The plot was mediocre, and the characterization was not properly done. And, I also had problem understanding the dialogues in the book.

My first problem with the book was, that, 60 odd pages down the line, I still couldn’t grasp the plot. Although, as per the blurb, I was reading about the protagonist trying to find out a missing person, but I found pages dedicated to matters relating to sale of a Soccer Club Photographs, horse racing(after reading 7 Dick Francis I have had enough of horse racing) and duplicate horses etc. Although these were very boring, but I couldn’t skip them, lest they turn out to be important, and somehow related to the main plot. But, after almost  half the book has gone by, realization dawned on me that these events were not related to the main plot, and that skipping them wouldn’t hurt, and so I started galloping, like a horse, through pages.

The characters were not developed. We hardly get to know anything about the villains. The abundance of characters in the book also makes it difficult to follow the flow of the plot. The dialogues were not good. They, according to my guess, were in the style of local vocabulary. As far as authenticity goes it was great, but as far as the plot goes, reading and getting the point, was very difficult.

And, lastly, the plot was flimsy. With the absence of a well defined villain, the plot never reached the height promised by the blurb. The book turned out to be a financial thriller, but by the end of the book, I had no interest in knowing, in detail, who, why or how laundered what money, how they planned to get off etc etc.