David's Reviews > The Maze

Demille's John Corey novels are usually very good. This one is quite the exception.

The stuff I really like is Corey's thought process. Frequently, Corey quotes himself as saying something extremely smartaleck and then he says something like, no, I didn't say that. Still, watching him think one thing and say another at times is a real hoot. However, as we get closer to the end of the novel it gets tired and old.

I feel he make a couple of serious goofs.

The first goof that Demille makes is that he takes nearly 1/4 of the book setting up the actual investigation and then what seem to be extremely long conversations explaining what his former lover, Beth Penrose, believes the bad guys have done. In fact, we never find out whether or not they did these bad things--- instead, we are treated to a bunch of other things they did... but the really bad stuff is left unanswered.

The second goof is in the title and the cover. From the very beginning, the reader knows that Corey is going to find himself fighting for his life in an actual maze. I know that the title is a reference to the convoluted situation/investigation.

The final goof is that Corey never really investigates, he just blunders into the "maze" in his usual bull-in-a-china-chop approach. Instead of actually making deductions, the bad guys do some bad stuff in front of him and he tries to pull a fast one that just gets him in trouble.

The lack of real investigation, the failure to determine the acutal murderers, and the long build up to a rushed conclusion just spoils it.