≫ Read Gratis Identity Crisis A Sam McRae Mystery Volume 1 Debbi Mack 9781942266150 Books

Identity Crisis A Sam McRae Mystery Volume 1 Debbi Mack 9781942266150 Books

Download As PDF : Identity Crisis A Sam McRae Mystery Volume 1 Debbi Mack 9781942266150 Books

Identity Crisis A Sam McRae Mystery Volume 1 Debbi Mack 9781942266150 Books

This is a light read for the beach or travelling. The protagonist is a lawyer who is nice to her client, but don’t look too closely at her ethics. The supporting cast ranges from rich club owner to hires ripping off the business to mob thugs and murder victims. Others appear as the book progresses and characters’ secrets become known.

My confusion arose from the title of the book, which did not mesh with the action, which involved murders, accusal of the lawyer’s client, injuries to the lawyer by the Mob, and character name change, but where was the identity crisis? A Post Office box she didn’t open in the lawyer’s name with somebody else’s mail in it? A piece of paper with her social security number on it that mysteriously disappeared? No follow up on either item.

If either of these clues were supposed to indicate attempted identity theft, no further actions supported this. The term “identity theft” normally applies to a very serious illegal crime, but in this case “Identity Crisis” appears to be used more as an attention getter for the book than an actual case. You might enjoy this book as a murder mystery but don’t be led astray by the title.

I received a Kindle copy of this book from the publisher for an honest review.


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Identity Crisis A Sam McRae Mystery Volume 1 Debbi Mack 9781942266150 Books Reviews

I downloaded this for my for free or 99cents (don't remember, not worth looking up) and wanted to like it . . . I finished the book only because I was on travel and my flight had been delayed for a couple of hours. As other reviewers have stated there was the possibility of a great plot here, but there were some places where the ball was just dropped by the author . . .

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

So, why was there a POBox with her name on it and mail to someone else? What WAS in that envelope? How did it relate to the case?

As reviewer "Kete" stated, how could she get kidnapped by the Mob, beaten so badly as to require a one week stay (I had surgery in March and they only let me stay for 2 nights and I had bones removed and replaced!) and NO ONE ASKS ANY QUESTIONS???? She didn't report THAT to her friend the cop, but she's reporting that she follows someone to the airport? And while we're at the airport, what happened to the guy who went to the airport and what was his part in the whole thing? And once the Mob guys were in the automobile accident, everyone else in the Mob just forgets about her and she doesn't have to worry anymore? HUH?????

If it's free for your and you might get caught in airport delays, it's probably worth the download.

However, having said all of that, having lived in the area where this book was set, I would read another offering from Ms. Mack, hoping that she would have better writing, plot development, editing, consistency in her next story.
Debbi Mack's debut novel, "Identity Crisis," has a lot going for it. It's a well-written, briskly paced, plot-packed detective mystery that makes strong but subtle use of its Chesapeake Bay-area settings held my attention for the most part. Overall, it's a few cuts above the majority of self-published fare.

Unfortunately, it's a little too packed with plot -- to the extent that the final act goes off the rails, with way too many scenes in which way too much is explained. I found myself jumping back and forth, trying to make sense of who did what to who and for what reasons, and not often succeeding.

And what's explained most of all is that most of the mystery in the preceding pages was a red herring that distracted from a solution that no reader of "Identity Crisis" could possibly have anticipated. That, in my opinion, cheated me as a reader out of the "Aha! Fiendishly clever! I should have figured that one out!" moment that makes good mystery fiction so satisfying.

What was ostensibly a tale of identity theft and murderous greed -- and a very complicated one at that, filled with shifting money, drifting evidence and possible double-crosses by the bucketful -- gets almost completely tossed aside in favor of a story of personal vengeance that comes out of nowhere. It all culminates in an overly talky climactic scene in which the killers, peripheral characters to that point, all but stop the action to explain. And explain and explain and explain.

The overall impression I get is that the author lost the handle on the plot and had to scramble to tie together several loose strands of plot.

I'd almost be OK with that if I cared more about the characters, but the book's heroine, Sam McRae, is not particularly well-developed. She's a lawyer who seems to have only one client -- someone who starts off being charged with murder and ends up almost completely offstage -- and seems to forget her canon of ethics as often as not. Some of the things she does, like being ahead of the police in questioning the owner of a strip club that appears to be run by a couple of scam artists or not reporting a mob beating that hospitalized her for a week, stretch plausibility to the breaking point.

The shadings of her character seem to be cobbled together from other detective novels -- a cat, a crappy car, a caretaker neighbor and a complacent lover among them -- and don't add up to anything compelling. (I did appreciate that the developing new love interest, a competing investigator, was nicely underplayed.)

All that being said, I admired Mack's grasp of genre craft, and was glad to see that she ensured her novel received strong story-editing and copy-editing. While I was disappointed in "Identity Crisis," I also see that Debbi Mack knows her stuff. So I'll give her, and Sam McRae, another chance in the next book in this series, the just-released "Least Wanted."
This is a light read for the beach or travelling. The protagonist is a lawyer who is nice to her client, but don’t look too closely at her ethics. The supporting cast ranges from rich club owner to hires ripping off the business to mob thugs and murder victims. Others appear as the book progresses and characters’ secrets become known.

My confusion arose from the title of the book, which did not mesh with the action, which involved murders, accusal of the lawyer’s client, injuries to the lawyer by the Mob, and character name change, but where was the identity crisis? A Post Office box she didn’t open in the lawyer’s name with somebody else’s mail in it? A piece of paper with her social security number on it that mysteriously disappeared? No follow up on either item.

If either of these clues were supposed to indicate attempted identity theft, no further actions supported this. The term “identity theft” normally applies to a very serious illegal crime, but in this case “Identity Crisis” appears to be used more as an attention getter for the book than an actual case. You might enjoy this book as a murder mystery but don’t be led astray by the title.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher for an honest review.