Title: Big Bad Killing Machine
Author: Sally A. Allen
Publication: December 3, 2012
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing
Genre: Thrillers & Suspense
Pages: 176
Source: Bohlsen Group
SYNOPSIS: (From Goodreads)
Carlton is a football star who also possesses a dark side.
This is the story of the highs and lows of his split personality.
Be prepared for macabre situations.
REVIEW:
**A copy of this book was provided in exchange for an honest review.**
“Big Bad Killing Machine” follows the story of Carlton, a typical kid who wants to be popular, the king of school, and all that goes with it. Unfortunately, he is also a psychopath. Now anyone who knows anything about me knows that I am a huge fan of murder mysteries or thriller novels. It just so happens that this novel fell very short of what I would expect a good novel to be like.
The first problem I had with this book was the length; 147 pages. All those pages in my hard copy consisted of 8th grade to college years. That is a lot of years to cram into that few pages. Each chapter only lasted 1-2 pages and moved very, very quickly. This caused constant confusion as to what year we were in, as one chapter the kid was just starting 9th grade and the next chapter he was accepted to college and moving out.
There were also many unrealistic situations in this book. Every time the main character killed someone it was very careless, not a lot of clean up, yet the character always got away with it without even being questioned. In real life, Carlton would have been caught in a heart beat. The author made it seem like the police were completely incompetent. At one crime scene the EMT’s lit up cigarettes and the chief of police pulled a gun to scare innocent bystanders away from the scene. Both very unbecoming behaviors of rescue personnel and would get them fired quickly.
Aside from the speed and the unrealistic aspects of this story, there was no character development, personalities of supporting characters changing for no reason. The mother started out as the supporting parent and the dad was more the doubtful one. Part of the way through this completely changed to the mom acting more of the disapproving, crazy mother and the dad was incredibly supportive (and a bad parent… but that’s another issue). Allen could have lengthened this story out by simply putting more detail into the characters and fillers to make the timeline more realistic. The book came across as more cliffs notes than a novel.
The description of “Big Bad Killing Machine” sounded great with a fantastic plot, however the delivery was flawed. I don’t enjoy giving low ratings, but I couldn’t find any aspect to increase the rating for “Big Bad Killing Machine” above a one star.
You can pick up a copy of “Big Bad Killing Machine” on Amazon or Barnes and Noble . Also you can add it to your TO READS list on Goodreads.
