Sri Lanka It's Happening

June 4, 2007

It is not often that I abandon a book halfway through. A book has to be really really bad for that to happen. A close encounter by gerald seymour has reinforced my belief that publishers will do anything for money. Once an author makes it into a best seller list, he can write absolute rubbish and publishers will just fall over each other to lap up that trash.

The plot is unbelievably weak. The main character is a sniper, he often goes deep into enemy territory, indentifies a target at 500 meters through the scope of his sniper rifle and kills him. Obviously such an assasin would operate by looking closely at a photo provided by the intelligence operatives and commiting the face to memory? So why can't he do it this time?

The sniper who cannot identify the target specially when the target has a prominent "craw's foot like " scar on his face has no business of being a sniper. This one needs to drag a diplomat (a chair warmer) with him to spot the craw's foot. Authors who create such characters have no business being writers.

The diplomat, after a few weeks of non formal training is able to track through the hills of lebanon with an 80 pound pack on his back, the author concedes that he makes a bit of noise by stepping on the odd twig or kicking stones and they are nearly caught when a boy and a dog almost stumble on them. Fortunately the boy ignores the dog's barking and calls the dog away.

Hang on a second, a muslim boy have a dog as a pet? next the moron will tell us that the muslims of lebanon each bacon and eggs for breakfast and have pork ribs for dinner. Instead of tea or coffee they drink beer in the afternoon.

Before heading off deep into Lebanon, the sniper takes out a young girl and a donkey. The young girl is a reluctant suicide bomber but the donkey is not the author. The donkey is laden with dynamite and when shot explodes with a yellow flash. If he had bothered to read up on dynamite he would know that you cannot set it by shooting it and it does not explode with a yellow flash.

Posted by raditha at June 4, 2007 1:34 PM