Dirt by Stuart Woods
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Someone is faxing scandalous gossip to the offices of tabloid publishers and columnists. The targets of the scandal sheet hire former cop, former lawyer turned private detective, Stone Barrington, to find the culprit. Stone follows all the leads between sheets, gets hit in the head a couple times, and remains unconcerned when his client murders her secretary who leaked the dirt on her. Hit men hired by the aggrieved publisher beat Stone to the guilty parties by minutes, but he arrives in time to shoot the mafia thugs and rescue the girl who was almost raped.
This period piece of crap is part of a series that I’ve been told is wildly popular. It even claims to be a New York Times bestseller. That says much, none of it good, for the reading public. Dirt is amateurishly written and contains factual errors. The hero is barely likable, and the supporting characters vacuous. It is set in New York City in the nineties when cell phones only made phone calls, databases were on CD’s, and we still used fax machines. That part was a little nostalgic.
Highly Opinionated 