A GREAT READ: GREG ILES' THIRD DEGREE

First, let me introduce this post. It's written by guest poster, Randy Reynolds, of Carencro, LA. He emailed this to me with the request to post it. I thought it was good. Please feel free to send me any reviews you might have writen at one time or the other if you'd like, my email is waalkwriter@gmail.com. I'd be glad to post them, and will always make sure to specially recognize guest posters.

So I sit down on Saturday morning with a bowl of cereal and look around for something to read. I grab a Newsweek (same old same old) and can't get into it, so I put it under my cereal bowl in case I spill anything. (Not having a bird cage, this is the best use I can think of for good old mundane Newsweek.) But what am I to read? The backs of cereal boxes don't have stories and biographies anymore, like when I was a kid. There's a phone book nearby, but I've already read that. (I found the yellow pages to be particularly well-plotted.) There's a huge old dictionary that was placed on the dining table to settle arguments during games of Scrabble with my grandson. He doesn't know it, but I've already read it. Cover to cover.

Damn. I've got the cereal bowl on the magazine. I've got too much milk and a gob of peanut butter in the cereal (just the way I like it.) I'm poised to eat, but I have nothing to.... Wait a minute! There's a plastic bag on the table and it's shaped like...like BOOKS!!

We have a friend who sends over her book club books after she reads them. That must be what's in the bag! Breakfast is saved!

I tear into the knot at the top of the bag. It doesn't open fast enough, so I start ripping, desperate to get to the books. I'm getting hungry, and I'm not going to feed my body without feeding my mind! Got to have something to read! So, let's see what's in here!

Oh.

New York Times Bestselling Author James Patterson. Talk about formula fiction...he's a former ad agency exc, writes by committee. Not bad, but certainly not great.

Patricia Cornwell, a real CSI investigator. Not to be confused with that other New York Times Bestselling Author Patricia Cromwell.

I'll pass.

I look down at my cereal bowl. Four to eight minutes. Just give me four to eight minutes of good reading so I can get through breakfast.

I pick up THIRD DEGREE by Greg Iles. The dust jacket is interesting: Iles lives in nearby Natchez, Mississippi, and plays in Stephen King's Rock Bottom Remainders. Hmmmmm.

I take a bite of Special K with Strawberries and turn to page one. The heroine is taking something out of a tampon box. My spoon stops in mid-air. I've never read a book that started like this. Maybe I'll just read the first chapter and see what this is all about...

Fifteen hours and 385 pages later, I close the book and smile, recalling all the characters I've just spent the day with, how perfectly each one of them was drawn. The plotting was extraordinary. Everything fit. There was not a wasted word in the 385 pages. Every sentence advanced the plot. And after every couple of plot points there was a pivot, which always kept me guessing. From the heroine's pregnancy test to her husband, the doctor, taking hostages, THIRD DEGREE is a gripping novel--one that gives "popular fiction" a good name. I highly recommend it as a way to zone out of this world for a day or so, because once you pick it up you're not going to be able to put it down.