{"id":17034,"date":"2022-07-15T18:48:53","date_gmt":"2022-07-15T22:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=17034"},"modified":"2022-07-15T18:48:53","modified_gmt":"2022-07-15T22:48:53","slug":"woman-in-the-waves-by-william-j-cook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=17034","title":{"rendered":"‘Woman in the Waves,’ by William J. Cook"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This book grabbed me<\/strong> on the first page, with a well-written description of a walk on the beach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, it lost me soon after that. But I stayed with it out of an odd sort of train-wreck fascination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woman in the Waves<\/a><\/em> by William J. Cook is part of a series, and apparently wraps up business from previous books. But it stands alone all right. I certainly won\u2019t be going back for the preliminaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Bristol is a college professor in Driftwood, Oregon, a widower who has regimented his life strictly to regain a sense of control. One day, on his weekly walk on the beach, he sees a woman in a wedding gown walking into a heavy surf. Although he tries to rescue her, she\u2019s gone in a moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, not long after, he finds a woman\u2019s severed arm on the beach. On one of its fingers is a valuable diamond ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Policeman Charley Whitehorse is chief of police in Driftwood. In spite of the coincidence of Peter reporting both incidents, he doesn\u2019t suspect him. His thoughts can\u2019t resist turning to a man he knows to be a killer, who eluded him in a previous case \u2013 another college professor with a sexual taste for young coeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story itself was okay, though melodramatic at the end. But the storytelling was highly amateurish. It read very much like a lot of well-meant Christian fiction \u2013 and often slipped into theological discussions. But no particular faith was affirmed, and a fair amount of profanity was present. Also there was premarital sex without criticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The author\u2019s main problem was over-writing, something I complain about in a lot of my reviews. One of the characters asks at one point, \u201cIs everybody around here becoming a [expletive deleted] philosopher?” A moment of self-awareness by the author, because everybody does philosophize in this book. Which leads to another problem \u2013 all the characters think and talk the same way. Gangsters and cops and college professors \u2013 you can\u2019t tell them apart by their speech. In general, it\u2019s a good idea to convey information to the reader through thought and dialogue rather than information dumps. But there are limits. Not everybody thinks out everything they’re doing every time they perform habitual acts, but they do in this book. A lot of very unnecessary information gets conveyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, the characters tend to make theatrical gestures, like leaping up and shaking their fists at the heavens. Scenes like that need to be used judiciously, if at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I did not enjoy Woman in the Waves<\/em>, and I do not recommend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book grabbed me on the first page, with a well-written description of a walk on the beach. Unfortunately, it lost me soon after that. But I stayed with it out of an odd sort of train-wreck fascination. Woman in the Waves by William J. Cook is part of a series, and apparently wraps up … Continue reading ‘Woman in the Waves,’ by William J. Cook<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[4261,4262],"class_list":["post-17034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-william-j-cook","tag-woman-in-the-waves"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17034"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17035,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17034\/revisions\/17035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}