THE LIGHT IN THE RUINS (Chris Bohjalian) - October 4/13

Sigh. Bohjalian lets me down again. The first hundred pages or so of this almost disastrously overlong book are so uninvolving and dull I was seriously contemplating abandoning my rule and just not finishing it. Things do improve close to the halfway mark, as the investigation into the brutal murders grows kind of interesting and, in the past, the relationship between Cristina and the German becomes fairly decent. But Bohjalian is simply unable to develop the myriad of other characters to a similarly involving extent; it's so bad, in fact, that when the identity of the murderer is revealed, I was scratching my head wondering who this guy was. Bohjalian needs to stop trying so hard to write poetic, ultra descriptive passages and start focusing on fully-realized characters and an interesting, propulsive story. ** out of ****