scribblerrva's reviews
37 reviews

It was all good until we got to the whole MAGA/BLM thing at the end.

By the way...BLM, Y’ALL...but then the big Black pro football player gets stabbed by the white racist sex predator disgraced ex-cop MAGA guy saving White ex-cop lady and is NEVER MENTIONED IN THE BOOK AGAIN other than “Oh, I hope he’s alive”. YES IM A BLACK MAN AND YES I AM VERY ANGRY RIGHT NOW. WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ABOUT?!?!?

I’d been looking forward to reading this book for months, only for everything that drew me into the story reaching no resolution AT ALL. So disappointed right now..

Absolutely remarkable book that I would recommend to EVERYONE! As a lifelong fan of Ghostbusters, I cannot understate the GB vibes Ghost Squad gave me. A quick yet satisfying read!

I get the feeling Patricia Cornwell wants the Kay Scarpetta/Carrie Grethen relationship to give off Sherlock/Moriarty vibes. It does not work. This book is just hundreds of pages of a bunch of super-intelligent, privileged, and pretentious Ivy League-educated cops and federal agents talking down to each other and lying to each other. And I’m not even joking. If Jane Austen were to write a mystery novel this would be it. I hate books where absolutely nothing get accomplished by the end. I don’t even care that this is a series, the end wasn’t satisfying at all. There was no resolution at all, just a magical wave of the hand at the end to explain everything the author couldn’t be bothered to explain. Overall, just an ordeal to get through. Gave it a two because there were some tense moments that gave me hope for excitement to come, even though I was let down every single time.

I’m going to do it. I am going to sound like every writer in this book and unapologetically so. This was the single worst book I have ever read in my life. This book has to be the most boring book I have ever voluntarily read cover to cover in my spare time. The only reason that I am giving it two stars instead of one is because of the fact that it taught me two things about myself...well...it taught me one thing and then reinforced something else within me. First, it validated my belief that literary criticism sucks as a whole. There is a reason why, whenever I read any classic novel, I skip the prefaces and introductions by such-and-such academics: because everything they write is pretentious, overtly verbose, and often allude to authors that they presume the reader already knows and has already read, providing no context as to why those authors’ words should mean anything to me. Secondly, this book taught me, merely through the arduous experience of reading it, that I can read ANYTHING now. Every book I ever quit in the middle of reading because it was too boring? Oh, I can most ASSUREDLY conquer now after this piece of trash. “Pride and Prejudice”? This book cured me of my disdain for Jane Austen. “I Am Charlotte Simmons” by Tom Wolfe...I could make my way to the end of that now. The Lord of the Rings series...yup...I absolutely can make my way through that, the Hobbit AND The Simarillion. War and Peace?!?!? Yep...even that. And I attempted that book TWICE. So, if there was ANY bright spot for me from reading “Poisoned Pens”, it was that there is now NO book that I can’t make my way through. Because there is absolutely NO book that could POSSIBLY shrivel my soul up in boredom the way this book did. It was THAT remarkably terrible a reading experience. And I refused to quit it...I wasn’t going to give the author OR this book the satisfaction. Pops ain’t raise no punk and Momma ain’t raise no quitter. If I was going to trash it on Goodreads, like I have been dying to do for nearly a month now, I had to earn the right to do so. And the only way I was gonna earn that right was by reading it all the way through. So here we are. PS: Ernest Hemingway sucked. He was the dirt worst and anyone who idolizes him or reveres him or his work needs to re-evaluate themselves. Dude was trash. Okay...I’m done.