Barbados Heat by Don Bruns, a Mysterious Review.

Review: Rock-and-roll journalist Mick Sever returns in Barbados Heat (after last year's Jamaica Blue), a fairly routine mystery with unoriginal and stereotypical characters.

Barbados Heat reads like a plot outline for a screenplay. One can't help but start imagining the actors who would be cast for the various players (co-starring Ving Rhames as T-Beau, Joan Allen as Alicia Shapply, ...). And though some of the book is set in Barbados, Bruns never takes advantage of the setting, failing to evoke the character of the people and culture of this country.

There is a rushed feel to this book. Bruns favors short chapters (there are 66 in 302 pages) for no obvious literary reason. Oddly, the first two chapters begin with a specific date and a precise time (suggesting these may be important), but are not mentioned again. And somehow Sever is able to observe Ginny while talking on the phone with her, a thousand miles apart. Minor points to be sure, but a better author of a better mystery would have paid attention to these details.

South Beach Shakedown
Oceanview Publishing (Hardcover), September 2006
ISBN-13: 9781933515021; ISBN-10: 1933515023

Barbados Heat

A Mick Sever Mystery by Don Bruns