Denise Mina rated a full-page interview recently in the New York Times Book Review about her new thriller, Conviction (Mulholland Books, $27.00). I found it to be perhaps the most disappointing book I have ever reviewed.
Conviction starts with a great subplot. A billionaire and his two children have died on his yacht that sank off the Bay of Biscay in France. A diver wearing a TV camera goes down two hundred feet to the scene, looking for a valuable necklace. He finds the decomposing bodies, but the blurry image seems to show a ghostlike fourth person. His oxygen depleted; he dies in the wreckage on live TV. Pretty exciting, huh!
Anna’s morning begins with her husband leaving her and taking their two children along with the woman living next door, who was Anna’s friend. Livid, Anna tries to slug the lovers then flees. On her way out of town, she listens to a podcast of the yacht mystery and realizes she met the owner of the yacht years before while working at a ritzy hotel. Anna becomes obsessed, not with her dying marriage, but the yacht.
Early on we know something bad happened to Anna in the past and that Anna is not her real name, setting up the main plot which at first is quite intriguing. However, in her journey, Anna picks up the next-door husband of the woman who took Anna’s mate. He is an anorexic former rockstar, and also one of the stupidest and most irritating characters you will find in bestselling fiction. I didn’t know men could get anorexia until reading this book, so I researched this and found women are four times more likely, but it does happen.
One of the more ridiculous scenes occurs while they are on the run in Venice from a hired assassin. Anna and the former rockstar get drunk with the hitman on the train, completely dissolving any tension. Also, two serious car collisions cause no injury to either good guys or bad. I would have tossed it aside but wanted to know the solution to the yacht murders far more than I cared about anyone dumb enough to drink with someone who may be planning your murder.
Also, I thought all caps to describe EXCITEMENT went out of style 
Steve E Clark as seen in the New York Times is Author of Justice Is for the Lonely and Justice Is for the Deserving, Kristen Kerry Novels Of Suspense. Steve is a 2017 NY Big Book Award winner and a 2018 Independent Book Awards recipient. You can purchase his books via https://steveclarkauthor.com/buy-the-book/ or request it at your local book store. Want to know more about Steve Clark, read more reviews or speak directly with Steve? Learn more about Steve at SteveClarkAuthor.com
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