Book Review: A Time To Lie by D. W. Hardin

Ever since I happened upon an old Nancy Drew novel in my first grade classroom library,  I have been a fan of mysteries.    I enjoy many of the mystery sub-genres such as amateur detective and police procedural.    I know of course that mystery novels tend to be formulaic,  and most of the time that does not bother me.    Unfortunately,  in the case of D. W. Hardin’s A Time To Lie,  it really did bother me.   While the novel was reasonably engaging and held my attention throughout its 162 pages,  the plot seemed overly simplistic to me.   The fact that Hardin never names the city also seemed a real negative to me.   While I don’t in any way feel that it’s necessary to set a novel in a city you can find on a map,  I do think the story would work better if you at least gave your fictitious city a fictitious name.   While Hardin does have a Twitter account,  he does not seem to be doing much social media to promote this title,  and I was unable to contact him to ask questions about his work.   This also frustrated me more than a little bit.

My biggest complaint about Time To Lie  is that it seems to have been poorly proofread.   While it was not nearly as egregious as egregious as Allison Moore’s I Was I Am— which I stated was utterly unreadable due to a huge number of grammar, spelling and usage errors,  there were a number of errors which seemed glaring to me.  For instance referring to a bit of debris clinging to clothing as lent rather than lint.   As self-published novels go,  this one is reasonably well written,  if a bit amateurish and copy-edited almost adequately and much better than so many others.    I can’t honestly recommend that you pay three bucks to buy it  (I got it free)  but if you should happen to get a chance to download it without charge there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours.

A Time To Lie— Not Really Recommended

e-book  $2.99      trade paper back $8.99

Category : Books