THE SKELETON MAN (Jay Bennett) - September 22/10

Well, this plan to read all of my old youth fiction books before dumping them seems to have backfired already. This is a badly written novel that seems to consist primarily of hard-boiled (yet thoroughly unconvincing) dialogue, with the serviceable (yet all-too-slight) storyline squandered by Bennett. The deux-ex-machina appearance of a treasury agent at the end is nothing short of ridiculous, and it's worth noting that although it's super short, The Skeleton Man felt a whole lot longer than most actual novels. * out of ****