Wilderness
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3.7 • 27 Ratings
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Publisher Description
As featured in the Daily Record, Scotsman, and Evening Times
Wilderness
The bus is stranded, stuck fast in a snowdrift. The driver is missing along with a young girl. A half naked woman is left behind, handcuffed and freezing on board. Who she is and where the girl has gone unravels into a web of sexual abuse, mental torture and deeply laid family rivalries, spanning from Istanbul to Glasgow.
Newly appointed to the Major Crime and Terrorism Squad at Strathclyde Police, DI John J. Arbogast is tasked with tracking down a suspected paedophile as part of a national manhunt. Haunted by a failed case in the past he’s determined to find the girl before it’s too late. But as the case unravels to unveil an international sex trafficking ring it becomes clear that all is not what it seems.
Secrets will surface.
Customer Reviews
Good bones but a frustrating book to read
Wilderness has promising “bones” and enough interest in the plot to keep me reading ... but only in short “sittings”.
The cover design and premise sucked me in because I love a good British crime novel, but my expectations were shattered on the first page.
As a proofreader, copyeditor and author, I found the book’s main problem lies in the formatting ... or lack thereof. The single-line spacing, endless paragraphs with poor punctuation, typographical errors, and wordiness made this book incredibly difficult and frustrating to read.
Regarding the plot structure, so many characters were introduced in the first 6 chapters that the main protagonist’s identity was unclear. (I think I finally worked out it was DI Arbogast by the end of part 1! Rambling paragraphs could be improved by allowing the characters to “show” rather than tell (a basic premise of good writing) and thereby eliminate unimportant information which just “pads” the story.
It took me many years to learn the art of crafting and structuring a novel. To learn and appreciate how formatting greatly improves the ease of reading and reader engagement. Overcoming a propensity to tell instead of show allows the reader to engage with the characters and immerse themselves in the story. The hardest lesson was learning that less equals more and to eliminate wordiness to create a tighter, more engaging “can’t put it down” pager turner.
I would encourage the author to undertake a major copyedit. It would improve this book’s readability and polish it into a really good crime novel.