THE MINUS MAN (Lew McCreary) - February 20/12

This pretentious, sporadically interminable book does contain a few admittedly tense moments - eg Vann swaps out a food-court patron's Pepsi for his poison, Vann assumes he's poisoned someone but it turns out she didn't drink, etc - but is ultimately felled by McCreary's hopelessly ponderous writing style. The inclusion of flashbacks upon flashbacks doesn't help, and it's impossible not to wonder just what McCreary was hoping to do here. He's a good writer but sheesh, the dude needs to learn how to write for other people (ie it's just maddeningly over-written). ** out of ****