The Last Smythe (A Lahaina Mystery) Review

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The Last Smythe (A Lahaina Mystery) ReviewI picked up this book while vacationing in Maui last week. My son and I were enjoying taking dips in all of the pools at the island's fanciest resorts. We schemed that if we got caught, we would say that we were the Smith family under the theory that there had to be someone named Smith at the resort (but that we would pronounce it Smythe to give the lie more credibility). When I saw a Lahaina based mystery called The Last Smythe, the coincidence forced me to pick it up.
Notwithstanding the positive review by the author's son, it was the worst book that I have ever read all the way through. I believe this is my first Amazon review. Consider it a small dose of revenge on author Barbara Sharp for stealing a few hours of my vacation.
There were a couple of positives. First, it is always interesting to learn something historical about a place where you are vacationing. The author worked ten years as Research Director at the Lahaina Restoration Foundation, and it is clear that she knows quite a bit about the island's history. Of course, you can achieve the desired result without reading this terrible book. No matter how many time's you've read Michener's Hawaii, you would be better off reading it again than picking this up. I'm sure there are many other suitable choices. Second, it is also fun to read about places you can currently visit in the setting of a novel (lunch at the Koele Lodge in Lanai, Pineapples, etc.)
The negatives far outweigh the positives. First, the plot is ridiculous. It is mostly advanced by coincidence. The protaganist simply wanders about and the next clue miraculously appears.
Second, the dialouge is painful. I'd like to listen in on the author's life to see if her real life dialouge in any way resembles her characters. It's all bad, but the romantic dialogue between the protaganist and her boyfriend is particularly awful. Such pearls as "meet me upstairs for hugging," and "have you ever seen a lavender moon before?" The only realistic voice in the book is the cat - Mambo - because Mambo has no lines!
Third, there is a passage when the protaganist meets a black, disabled vietnam vet that is as awkward as a Curb Your Enthusiasm scene: "She was a little surprised to see that Nacho was black -- or African American. Just to be sure what she should call him, she introduced herself and said: 'Nacho, are you black?'" Could this have truly been written in 2001? Could our protaganist really not figure out that she should call him by his name and not his color?
Finally, the book appears to have been completely unedited. Even a casual reading by a friend would have resulted in numerous corrections. When I was about half way through, I was wishing that I had a highlighter so that I could mark all of the mistakes for use in this review. The most glaring example is on page 89 of the paperback edition, where a sentence fragment just hangs. The final sentence of the first paragraph on that page is "Well, it was too late now, they" -- no conclusion to the sentence, and no concluding punctuation. There are other syntax issues where a word is clearly missing from a sentence. There are also semantic problems. One that irritated me in the last half of the book is when the author repeatedly used the word "loose" when she meant "lose."
So why did I finish this stinker. First, I hate to start a book and not finish it because my wife and I have a running competition to see who reads more books each year. Second, as with bad movies, there is a perverse entertainment in witnessing the truly awful. If you enjoy that sort of entertainment, by all means, read The Last Smythe.
I'm not sure whether Amazon permits me to give zero stars, so I'm checking 1!The Last Smythe (A Lahaina Mystery) Overview

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