Book Unreview: HEADLIGHTS by CJ Leede

I had my doubts about this book from the first few pages.  Another emotionally damaged first-person narrator, yawn!  It might be a generational thing, but I am very tired of this device.

The narrator is a war veteran who has also been an FBI agent.  He’s one day away from returning to active duty when he is sought out by a former FBI colleague and beseeched to return to a never-solved investigation.

Read the book flap.  My disbelief started there.  Reading inside, I learned that the amnesic people wandered FOR MILES before being found with that human hair tied around their tongue.

Oh, come on!  That’s so patently improbable!  Think about it, dear reader.  Haven’t YOU ever found yourself with a hair caught in your mouth?  Maybe off a brush or your hand or a towel or something?  Tell me:  are you likely to go around for hours with that thing in your mouth driving you crazy?  NO! 

Much less somebody drugged or incoherent!  The first thing they would do upon regaining control of their body would be to get that irritating thing out of their mouth!

Another thing that rings my improbability bell is the oh-so-disturbed narrator, who is described on nearly every page as having interruptions in his reality and being unable to distinguish memories from present-day life.

This person—THIS person, I say—is going to be accepted into active military duty, or allowed to pack heat for the FBI?  Even AFTER evidence of such dislocation from reality is displayed to other characters?  UHH-UHH.

I paid this book the ultimate insult of not finishing it.  I only read as far as I did because it was the only book with me at the time.

See you Monday!