Too Beautiful to Die
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
The Washington Post has compared Glenville Lovell’s novels to “works by Morrison and Nabokov.” The New York Times praised his “sharp eye for the extraordinary.” Now he turns to crime fiction with a tale that “will keep readers guessing until the end” (Tananarive Due, author of My Soul to Keep).
There’s no love lost between the NYPD and black ex-cop Blades Overstreet since a suspicious bust nearly cost Blades his life. It didn’t kill him, and it didn’t kill his conscience either. That’s why he’s agreed to help an actress named Precious find her missing father.
Simple? Nothing as beautiful as Precious is ever simple—especially once Blades’s investigation leads to the discovery of a murdered FBI agent. Framed for the killing, pursued by the FBI, a pariah to his former NYPD “brothers,” Blades is in deep, on the run, and winding his way through New York’s Caribbean community to find the real killer before he’s forced to take the rap . . . or worse.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
MysteryTOO BEAUTIFUL TO DIEGlenville Lovell. Putnam, (296p) X ~ A melodramatic plot and histrionic dialogue, plus some racial and gender stereotyping that some readers may find offensive, tarnish Lovell's (Song of Night) otherwise suspenseful and engaging mystery. Black New York ex-cop Blades Overstreet gets seduced into the dangerous enterprise of helping alluring soap-opera star "Precious" find her long-lost father. Since Overstreet is already in the bad graces of the NYPD/FBI for accusing a fellow officer of shooting him "by accident" because of his color during a buy-and-bust operation, hostility toward Overstreet skyrockets when he stumbles on a murdered FBI agent. Attempting to grapple with issues of race and ethnic "otherness," the novel overdoes such references and, ironically, undermines their message with slurs such as the assertion that Jamaican women "prefer to ride the dick all night." Moreover, the author heaps crude metaphors like "I didn't realize this shit was going to become hotter than a hooker's ass" on top of clichEs like "To taste her was to eat a ripe, full-bodied fig." In between scenes of repulsively gruesome violence, the male characters brag in the crassest terms about their sexual successes. This is a book for macho crime fans only.
