Keith Cormack

Two years ago I tried to read Thirteen, I couldn’t get into it so I shelved it. Sometime later my wife tried with the same result so it went back on the shelf. This was its 3rd and final outing. A third of the way through and the NAFF’ometer had red-lined several times. By this point I should be drawn to at least one character or cared about one but I didn’t. It’s laughable, from Kane’s medical condition to the overuse of Americanisms, more than any American would use, to the awful analogies like ‘sounds like honey pouring down the barrel of a shotgun’. The writer’s style is jumbled and it doesn’t flow well. It’s too wordy and I found myself drifting off and having to reread parts concerned I’d missed something significant, as if. Only the promise of a great plot kept me reading but could that make me read 335 pages of what was proving to be drivel? It was an opportunity lost because the plot offered so much but delivered so little. I turned 200 pages by mistake and the story jumped to the courtroom and after a few chapters I still didn’t care. I’ve thought of speed reading by chapter to finish it but it’s time to give up. Thirteen reminded me of a bad comic strip or old black and white film with bad acting and voice overs like ‘I was sitting in my New York office when a case came in so I finished two bottles’, it’s a joke. Thirteen mentions ‘dime detective books’ which made me want one because it’d be better than this. Thirteen is no page turner. The unlucky for some title aside there’s just too much to dislike. I can’t believe it was published. Do your fellow man a favour, if you end up a copy of this, recycle it and get it out of circulation. It was so bad I gave up on the idea of reading books for a while.