Criminal Enterprise by Owen Laukkanen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Spinning from the first book to the second in a day and finishing with 24 hours certainly showed me that the author has a way of gripping you. Part of the reason is the looseness of the writing. As I wrote about the first, this book could have been so much better in more compenent hands, which is true of most books being produced today.

The writing is simplistic and seems to have a film in mind. As with the last book, this one, too, has mentions of “like a movie”. Thing is a movie is visual and a book should be constructed with well chosen words, practical wording. Laukkanen seems to be writing to push the reader to skip sentences and pages due to repetitious dialogue and scenes, instead of savoring well written prose of a situation.

What Laukkanen excels at is characterization and, in this novel, plotting. As with the first book, this one has very well written characters. Dialogue is consistent, as are actions. Almost. In both books Laukkanen creates a central bad guy that is altered to a point of fantasy. Approaching a story like a screen play will do that. The psychological angles, not mentioned, are very well thought out and written.

As with the last novel, this book ends quickly and leaves loose ends. That certainloy occurs in real life and i was OK with that in the first book. But here is the second and I find many similarities between the two in approach.

Background settings are very well written. There was always a great sense of place.

Bundled together this is overall a superior book to most coming out today. I’m on to #3.

Bottom line: I recommend this book. 7 out of 10 points.

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