Escape to Death - Stephen Perkins

                It all starts with the murder of a young prostitute named Clover who is sacrificed by witches. Her ghost is set on returning to human form so she can get revenge on those who have killed her and those that helped to cover the crime up. Moving back and forth between the worlds of showbiz, law enforcement and the highest political office in the United States, Escape to Death is a book all about getting to the top by any means necessary and not caring who you step on (or kill) along the way. Add in some witchcraft and a bit of the supernatural and this really should have been a fast paced and entertaining book.  Instead, I spent most of the time trying to stay interested and had to stop myself from putting it down and not picking it up again. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good points to the book and maybe with a little bit of character development, a tweak to the storyline and some work on the editing, this could be a much better read. There are a lot of characters but none are likeable enough for me to actually care about remembering who any of them are so it got a little bit confusing. If even a couple of the main ones were a little more fleshed out then maybe I would have actually remembered them. The dialogue was a fairly big problem for me because most of it was not believable. For example, if two cops made as many derogatory comments about individuals, in a professional setting, as what was written in the book, they wouldn’t be on the job. It was all very “cheesy” and had a B-movie vibe to it. Also, the characters were often referred to by either their first names or their last names but not consistently so I was always confused as to who was being referred to or who was talking. I felt like I needed a spreadsheet to keep track of everything and that’s because the book didn’t keep me interested.

                The book starts with the sacrificial murder of Clover and I thought I would be diving into a fantastic book. Unfortunately, Clover’s ghost is rarely mentioned for the first chunk of the book. More of her would have really lent to the supernatural aspect of the story. Some of the scenes were quite humorous in their outlandishness however I don’t think they were meant to be taken that way. One scene in particular is a sex scene involving Vasquez that is just strange and made me laugh although I don’t think that was what the author intended for a reader to do.

                All in all, the idea for the book is a good one but it just didn’t work on paper. The cover is interesting but doesn’t really pertain a whole lot to the story. I read the digital version and it formatted well to my ereader.