CSI Miami: Heat Wave by Max Allan Collins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The genre of choice by Collins should have him as one of my favorite writers. However, I have had a clunky time trying to embrace his novels. This one is better than some I’ve read, though not as good as it could be.

It’s the writing that bugs me. Though the characters are mostly well drawn, the overall story is clunky. I’ve had similar trouble with other Collins books. It’s as if he is writing sections of the story and, after it’s tacked together, the seams are still showing. This is particularly true as the story is resolved at the end.

I should add that I’ve never seen the television program.

About the Florida setting: Collins clearly has little knowledge of Florida and used other resources to enhance the story. There’s one point where he is pointing out something, that now slips my memory,involving the area of Dade County and it’s obvious that he pulled that from something like an encyclopedia because he entirely ignored the larger picture of what has been going on in Dade County. The set piece that sets off the rest of the book involves someone running to the scene. How that is described would be pretty impossible if you knew the area of Miami Beach. All of this does not effect my rating of the book, just wishing for better accuracy.

Big kudos to Collins for not draping a backdrop of the book of a realtor’s fantasy of sunshine and palm trees. Bulk majority of Florida authors, who don’t know the state, do this and often ruins the book for me.

Bottom line: I don’t recommend this book. 4 of ten points.

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