A Beautiful Madness by Lee Thompson is a crime/noir novel that is a bit of a departure for the author. His previous books (at least those that I have read) tended to fall into the horror/dark fantasy camp and I have enjoyed them tremendously. I appreciate dark mysteries as well, so I was looking forward to my read of A Beautiful Madness. I was not disappointed – this is a gritty piece of work for two reasons. One is the smoothness of the writing. The narrative is crisp and plot lines are addictive. The other is the character development. Most of the characters came fully alive on the page, especially the three siblings. Creating complex characters in a plot driven work is quite a skill, and Mr. Thompson does a fine job.
I did have a few problems with the work. One is the first person omniscient point of view that has been mentioned in other reviews. I felt it detracted the flow at times. This wasn’t fatal by any means, but on a couple of occasions I found myself wondering how this character would know what was going on. The second is the occurrence of a huge plot inconsistency. Without going into details, the demise of a character is described differently in two different sections of the book. This error should have been caught by the editor. Despite this, I could not put the book down. An enjoyable and gripping read.
I did have a few problems with the work. One is the first person omniscient point of view that has been mentioned in other reviews. I felt it detracted the flow at times. This wasn’t fatal by any means, but on a couple of occasions I found myself wondering how this character would know what was going on. The second is the occurrence of a huge plot inconsistency. Without going into details, the demise of a character is described differently in two different sections of the book. This error should have been caught by the editor. Despite this, I could not put the book down. An enjoyable and gripping read.
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