The Church of Dead Girls - Stephen Dobyn... This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life.

The best part of this book was finishing it. Seriously, I was absolutely thrilled to finally be done with this one so that I could move on to something else. I actually almost stopped listening pretty early on in the book because it just wasn't working for me but I made myself continue because I didn't feel like I had given it a chance. The last part of the book was a bit better for me but only a bit.

I was ready for an exciting mystery and hoped that it would be creepy and a bit gruesome. Just look at the title - I expected a equally amazing story. This book did start strong and I really enjoyed the opening scene. I wanted to know what happened to those girls. Unfortunately, the book went back to a time before the crimes and was really more of a character study than anything else. I couldn't believe how many characters were brought in the spotlight. We would learn one community members backstory and then move on to the next person's story. It was too many character to keep up with for me.

Once the girls had disappeared and the mystery moved into the spotlight, I did enjoy the story a bit more. I think one of my main issues was that all of the characters bored me in this book. I didn't feel anything for any of them - not even the girls. Even when the plot sped up, I didn't really have anything invested in the story. I actually think that this book could easily be made much shorter and the result would be a much more enjoyable story.

I didn't realize that I had read anything by Stephen Dobyns before I started this book. I guess I really haven't but I did read about a quarter of Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? before I gave up on it. I think that I had many of the same issues with that book in that I had a really hard time connecting with any of the characters. I did learn that this book was actually first published in the 1990's even though the audiobook was just released.

I did enjoy George Newbern's narration. This is the first time that I have listened to this narrator and I was really impressed. He had a very pleasant voice and was able to handle a very large cast of characters quite well. I thought that he did a nice job with both the male and female voices and enjoyed the overall flow of his narration. I will definitely look for this narrator in the future.

I wouldn't recommend this book. I was disappointed on so many levels with this story and really regret not following my initial instinct of putting this one on the dnf pile early on.

I received a review copy of this audiobook from Dreamscape Media, LLC via Audiobook Jukebox for the purpose of providing an honest review.

Initial Thoughts
I am so glad to be finished with this book. I can actually move on to a book that I will like now that I am finally done. I literally had to force myself to listen to this one and if I didn't have a review copy, I would have just quit early in the story.

Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? is essentially an Elmore Leonard book written by . . . someone else. It doesn't have the zip, style and the panache of Leonard, though. It has a style and panache all of its own (almost no zip, though, but that's okay).

Things get kicked off here with a nasty motorcycle accident that may not have been quite so accidental. The "accident" was witnessed by a homeless man named Fidget, a man too tan for Connecticut, and a man sporting a pompadour, the three of them spend the next few days finding several ways that their lives intertwine. The accident is investigated by Detectives Streeter and Vikström, who might be really good at their jobs if they spent a little less time bickering than the Battling Bickersons (one of the most reliable jokes early on is Vikström's constant confusion over being asked if he was one of those famous Swedish detectives)

The tall, tan man is named Connor Raposo, a recently downsized teacher turned casino employee turned assistant to con-artists. Connor's our entry point into this world, he introduces us the various and sundry scumbags, deadbeats, and other miscreants. Some of whom seem to have hearts of gold buried underneath a whole lot of cosmetic surgery or some sort of developmental delay. Others are just plain evil. In the middle is pretty much everyone else -- Prom Queens whose life didn't turn out the way they wanted them to, single moms working less-than-legitimate jobs, beagle owners, motorcycle aficionados, or guys just trying to please/impress the women in their life. There's a real hodgepodge of humanity in all it's strangeness on display here.

After a few chapters the narrator started dropping the royal "we" into the descriptions, which surprised me, but it worked. The further on you get into the novel, the narrator intrudes more and more into the story, editorializing as well as narrating. The stronger the narrative voice grew, the better the book got.

My one complaint is that it's just too wordy -- I'm not saying this should've been as minimalistic as something by Leonard, but it could've been a bit more streamlined. Was this amusing? Yes. Comic? Yes. Absurd? Absolutely. But I didn't find it funny until the last few pages, and then I laughed a lot.

This novel is almost impossible to explain without giving everything away, before the setup is done, things are really underway -- it's not exactly fast-paced, but well-paced, slowly building up steam until it just barrels through the final events. A satisfying and very entertaining read. Give it a shot.

DNF @ 25%

I was looking forward to a fun quirky story. I've read 25% of the story and I just don't have any desire to pick this book up again. I haven't found anything to be even remotely funny and I don't care about any of the characters. This book just does not work for me at all.

ARC provided by Penguin First to Read.

Charlie is a misanthrope. When his mother, who owns the hotel where he works as the house dick, asks him what he would do with a million dollars, his response is that he'd like to buy a boat, anchor it offshore, and fish and read. (Sounds good except for the fishing.) If people wanted to come visit they could wave and he'd row over in the dinghy to get them, or not. His girl friends drop him because he's "not bold."

Charlie vows to find out who injured Victor, his friend, by running him down and stealing his camera. He discovers during the course of his poking around that an old mobster has been hanging around the hotel. That leads him to suspect the guy is planning to heist an armored truck that carries a substantial amount of money on a regular basis from the track. The police chief, when informed, scoffs, since it's the best protected run around and besides, there are so few roads for the thieves to escape on. Well, of course, Charlie has it nailed, but the links are not what he expected.

Mildly entertaining. Not as good as some of the other Dobyns I've read. 2.5 stars. really.

Weird things happening in a small town, but everything comes together in the end in a believable conclusion (of sorts). That alone makes it worth the read.

 

Also, this book has hints of Stephen King... actually, it's more like a bouillon cube of Stephen King. It has Stephen King flavorings, but stewed in a more fortified crock pot (if that makes any sense).

 

The familiar: sleepy small town, gossipy towns folk, gifted (read: not annoying) children, supernatural happenings, unusual deaths, mental illnesses, and animals with violent streak. What's different from the usual Stephen King fare is you get a bird's eye view of the the town and its inhabitants and you get to visit every character's life (main player's) and see events unfolding from his/her POV. Another thing that's different is the horror element. Often it's more humorous than scary. The central mystery has a real, not supernatural, culprit, and the conclusion is plausible and tidy, which you don't often see in Stephen King stories.

 

I can't shake the feeling that if this story was set in the 60s or 70s, it would have made more of an impact on the towns people and there'd be more of an ominous feel to the central mystery and deaths. Modern setting, technology, and crime-solving methods take away from the otherworldly feel of this sleepy town and its strange happenings.