Thomas Harris

A Novel

Cari Mora

Patrick Book

If this book was a house people would say it has good bones, but the unfinished rooms would be off-putting. 

Which is a pretty dumb way of saying I liked everything about this story except that it felt incomplete, like Harris neglected to fill in the gaps. It definitely has his vision, attention to detail, and a somewhat skewed perspective. But it feels like he races from one point to the next. Tertiary characters are introduced and dispatched without leaving much of an impression; henchmen run together without distinction; scenes jump and shift abruptly with the connective tissue occasionally coming later, almost as an afterthought. Given the underlying political and militaristic themes, it almost seems like Harris felt compelled to get it done and published before 2020 just in case Trump gets voted out.

Colleen

2 Stars

*A sadly disappointing, not-so-thrilling thriller*
 

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Harris had a new book coming out after a thirteen-year hiatus. Even when the bad reviews started rolling in, I brushed them off. I figured that people were just sulky that this book has nothing to do with Hannibal. So, I was still optimistic when I started reading Cari Mora
 
That feeling didn’t last long.
 
To boil it down, this book just doesn’t have anything great about it. It by far isn’t the worst book I’ve read. It won’t even make my bottom five for the year. But it might be one of the biggest disappointments of the year.
 
Cari Mora is a story weighed down by clichés and mediocrity. The plot reads like a cheesy B movie. There is gold buried under the house of a cartel leader and various people are trying to steal it. At the center of all of this is the title character, whose interesting back story doesn’t make up for her lack of personality and generic role as Hot Chick Number 5. Cari’s hotness and all the salacious and sadistic things the male characters in the book want to do to her is described over and over. I wanted to shout, “I get it! She’s hot and guys want to do bad things to her! Can we get back to heist bits?”
 
Sadly, even heists and warlords and gun fights weren’t enough to save this story. I did read it in a day, but it’s short and simplistic. All around, it has that trying-too-hard vibe throughout the whole story. This is particularly evident in the main bad guy: a psycho sadist German man who talks in rhymes and likes chopping off women’s body parts. It was corny; not scary.
 
The worst part about Cari Mora was the dialogue. It’s inorganic, corny, and there is way to much of it. Considering all the action that allegedly takes place, most of the book still manages to be characters stiffly talking about everything and nothing. Dialogue was never Harris’s strongpoint, but this was so bad! And the rest of the writing isn’t much better. Take the opening paragraph of the book:
 
“Two men talking in the middle of the night. They are 1,040 miles apart. One side of each face is lit by a cell phone. They are two half-faces talking in the dark.” 
Yeah… it doesn’t get better from there. The writing is jerky and lacking in depth. I think Harris was still going for shock value, but people are much more inured to gore than they were in the 80’s. So the violence in this story seems so gratuitous.
 
I feel really bad for Harris, to take such a long break and then come out with such a dud. I really wanted to like this book. But I couldn’t. It’s nowhere near the level of some of his previous work. But even if I’d never read any of his other books, this would still be a fail for me.
 
Here’s to hoping his next book is better!
 

RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 3 Stars
Writing Style: 2 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 2 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 2 Stars
Level of Captivation: 2 Stars
Originality: 1 Star

Cari Mora A Novel

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