BEARSKIN: A NOVEL (audiobook) by James A. McLaughlin



Published in 2018 by HarperAudio.
Read by MacLeod Andrews.
Duration: 9 hours, 49 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Bearskin features Rice Moore as the caretaker of a piece of Appalachian Virginia wilderness for a foundation. His job includes is walking the property, cataloging what he finds, remodeling the house on the property, and keeping poachers out. 


He's also hiding. A few years back he was caught smuggling drugs across the border from Mexico and ended up serving time in a Mexican prison. In the prison, Moore killed a man who was highly connected to a Mexican cartel and now he has taken on an assumed identity in the middle of nowhere in Virginia. 

When someone starts killing bears on the foundation property just to harvest organs to sell in Asia, Rice knows that he has to do something, even if it risks blowing his cover...

My Review:

This book sounds interesting and exciting. I found it underwhelming in so many ways. 

The book started out with tons of description. That's not unusual, especially early on. The book continued that way every time Moore entered a new scene - even if he has been in that setting a dozen times already. It just bogged things down to describe the same things over and over again in hyper-detail.

There were so many threads of a plot that started and were never acted upon. I understand that there are red herrings in stories, but these felt more like the author was exploring some ideas and then just walked away from them.  I don't want to provide spoilers, but at least half of the book is dedicated to plot lines that have no resolution.

The ending was just that - an ending. Three was no resolution to the main plot points. The book just ended with so many unresolved threads. A lot like real life, but not very satisfying in a novel. It's like the author just got tired of the whole thing and said, "Screw it!" and sent the manuscript off to the publisher. 

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Bearskin: A Novel by James McLaughlin.

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