Read as part of CBR15Bingo: On the road. The characters here take a couple of road trips, don’t want to say where or why, lest I spoil a big part of the book.
You know a writer is really good when you’re enjoying a book solely for the writing even if you couldn’t care less about the plot (and not much more about the characters).
That’s high praise — or perhaps even damning with faint praise. But I really enjoyed the experience of reading Michelle Gagnon’s Killing Me. I say experience because I didn’t think the story was very good; or really it’s just because I hate serial killer stories. Seriously, look what just happened in Long Island. I don’t know how many ways people need to learn that more often than not, serial killers are banal people, not criminal masterminds. Also, they kill people, most of the time women. I just never cared for the fascination, in both fiction and non-fiction.
And that doesn’t change here but this book is hilarious. Gagnon knows how to write good dialogue, create fun characters and just have a blast. I wish she was having a blast with a Thelma & Louise-esque roadtrip crime novel and not, y’know, a serial killer novel. But I enjoyed it.
So I’m giving this four stars but if someone played this straight or wasn’t as talented, it probably would be two. The plot is way too implausible, even for fiction. Why can’t the MC just be a fun, small-time grifter who escaped a serial killer and now just has to live on the run? That’s the book I was hoping for. Alas. It’s still good for what it is.
