Speaking in Tongues

Speaking in Tongues – by Jeffery Deaver

In most instances, when I’m reading a book that I am not particularly enjoying, I don’t give up on it.  I plow on ahead.  This drives my wife crazy.  Probably it drives her crazy because she has to hear my frustration.  “If you don’t like it, stop reading it!”  There’s some very good logic there.  In this instance, though, I’m definitely glad that I did not give up on this book.  This book was about 333 pages long, and I did not like it until I got to about page 250.  I actually ended up with a very high appreciation for this work, which was very surprising considering how much grumbling I did during the first 75% of my adventure.

If you know anything about Jeffery Deaver, you know that he is the master of the plot twist.  Nothing is ever as it seems, and even if you know that a twist is coming, you never can quite guess how he’s going to rearrange things.  Usually it’s a very nice, believable surprise – which is really why many enjoy his books so much.  This book is no different.  I would say that the abrupt twists in this story actually save it, and they turn it from a “pretty bad” book into a “very good” book.

That’s not to say the book is perfect.  There are some obvious flaws here.  Without giving much of the story away, there’s a “bad” guy who does “bad” things.  Essentially, he kidnaps a troubled teenager from a messed up home.  For the kidnapper’s plans to work, every step that he plans must occur with meticulous accuracy.  I would say that there’s about a 1 in 100,000 chance for everything to fall in exactly with the guy’s plans.  Of course, everything he plans works perfectly.  It’s a bit too much to swallow.

Once you get to the “twist” though, you’re so overwhelmed by the directional changes, you can easily forgive the events leading up to the moment.  At least this worked for me.   Many times when I read people’s reviews of books, they review the book before they finish it.  They give it a very low rating and say something like “I couldn’t even finish this book….”.  If you’re reading my review and you decide to invest in this story, I would ask you to stick it out until the end.  Fortunately, it’s not a very long book, so hanging on an extra 100 pages or so isn’t too much to ask.