Last night I read a book by a semi-local author and THE STUPID, IT HURT. I mean, this was SUCH a bad book that i kept reading merely from a sense of disbelief that it had actually gotten past a single beta reader, let alone an editor (although I think it’s a vanity press book, so the author may have opted out of editing, to her detriment).

We have Character A, who disappears on Friday. Character B is killed Saturday. Character A’s body is pulled out of the river a few days later, and the coroner immediately determines not only that she was killed Friday, but also that she was sexually assaulted by Character B, and other information so specific that it makes “CSI”conclusions look vague. Her family members subsequently become suspects in Character B’s murder. Her father and brother have an alibi–they were fishing with a buddy–and her mother has an alibi, that she was home cleaning and cooking dinner, which is proven by vacuum tracks in the carpet and by the dad and brother attesting to the yummy meal. The sheriff’s detective takes this at face value (the vacuum tracks really did look fresh), and not until our plucky heroine has a late-night revelation does anyone question whether Mom might have managed to sneak away and kill Character B. (Spoiler alert: She did. The yummy meal came from a grocery store.)

But when they’re having the big old confrontation, it turns out that since Character A disappeared Friday, her loving family spent Saturday looking for her. The author apparently forgets that the day for which she took such pains to set up the fishing alibi is the same day her suspects were out searching for their missing relative. So the family was doing one thing on “Saturday, the day after Character A disappeared” and something entirely different on “Saturday, the day Character B was killed.” This wasn’t characters presenting two different alibis; it was the author totally losing track of her story.

I had other problems with the book: a pushy and domineering boyfriend whom the “strong, independent” heroine concludes just knows what’s best for her better than she herself does; comments so racist they almost made me laugh out loud (“she knew from dating her boyfriend that men in his culture are really image-conscious”); a pretty slapdash attitude to pet care; the fact that the police think the idiot heroine can help them solve the mystery, so they share confidential information with her–which she then tells their primary suspect–and let her sit in on interrogations.

I still haven’t decided whether this is two hours of my life I’ll never get back, or a good reminder to read and re-read my own work carefully, ask for feedback from readers I trust, and make sure if I deviate from accuracy regarding police procedure, history, or anything else, I do it convincingly and with good reason.