Review of Silent Screams by C.E. Lawrence, reviewed by Adam S. Beslove

Title: Silent Screams
Author: C.E. Lawrence
Genre: fiction, crime, thriller
Reviewer: Adam S. Beslove (Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA)
Rating: 2 of 5 stars

It hits all the major tropes of crime fiction/fantasy. It's got a brutal killer! It's got religion! It's got romance! It's got a cop that identifies with the killer! It's got a father figure! It's got deceit! Seems padded with extra descriptions of the environment, where buildings are located, bus schedules and routes, but fortunately I could skip whole paragraphs because it was like an editor had Lawrence insert that information in blocks. And the main character! He seems to never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. He doesn't readily share what he's learned in a timely manner with his fellow detectives, takes stupid risks repeatedly, and is so often unprepared that if he were my employee I'd have fired him early on. Well, he is a government employee... Definitely a competently written book by somebody who's been taught to lay out plot and chapters, but competency doesn't translate into entertainment.