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To Catch a Bad Guy Janet Maple Series Book 1 edition by Marie Astor Romance eBooks

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To Catch a Bad Guy Janet Maple Series Book 1 edition by Marie Astor Romance eBooks

Part of me wants to give this novel one star, but I did finish reading it, so two it is.

Janet Maple (I keep wanting to call her Marple!) is a 29YO lawyer who was "downsized" from the NYC DA's office and finds herself working as an assistant to estranged friend Lisa at a finance firm. She's surprised no real work is involved with the job. Later she becomes suspicious about the firm's activities and supposedly--honestly, I didn't think she did much--investigated their dealings. Dean/Dennis, a Treasury agent, works undercover at Bostoff in order to uncover enough evidence to bring charges against the company. The two meet--Janet none the wiser until late in the novel--and later "work" to gather the evidence after Dean/Dennis essentially blackmails Janet into providing evidence. They're attracted to one another, but there's no real romance to speak of. The crooks get caught (supposedly through stellar investigation by the duo) no one involved is actually punished except for the cardboard bad guys. Overall, it's a pretty unsatisfactory read.

First, none of the characters are likable. Astor paints Janet as a "strong" woman who knows her mind, but Janet spends the majority of her time fretting over her lack of marital prospects with men she had no real interest in to begin with. We're subjected to a flashback--twice!--of why she didn't get the prom date she really wanted (hint: she was too spineless to say yes). At one point, she gets ready to attend a party with the desire to "hold her own" and look attractive. The very next moment, she gets angry because her mother suggests a more flattering hairstyle because--you guessed it!--she doesn't care what she looks like. Her ex-boyfriend essentially stole her work and used it to get promoted (while she got fired) yet she never feels anger towards him. Instead she "misses" him. I read the entire book and I'm still not sure that she actually understood what happened with him. Oh, and she's a size 6 who feels like she's fat. A. Size. Six.

I think Astor intended for us to find the male lead attractive. Instead, he's a vain, conceited jerk who considers himself God's gift to women. We get to see inside his head, so we know he likes to receive their "adoration" and have flings. No problem with that. It's the puffed up pride he feels about this (he doesn't come across as respecting these women much) that bothered made him unlikable. He apparently has a sense of humor, but we only have Janet's opinion on this (we aren't treated to it). I'd take the claim with a grain of salt.

The secondary caricatures--I mean characters!--are as nicely corrugated as you could ever want from cardboard. We have the greedy CEO (later woobiefied), the feckless brother, the slimy lawyer and the gold digging bimbo friend. I'm too harsh on the brothers. They weren't as horrible as I make out, but there was nothing unexpected to their character. The lawyer was not only a crook, but a womanizing implied date rapist. The gold digger (Janet's estranged friend) is exactly that. She sets out to get engaged to one of the brothers because he has money. She also apparently so ruined Janet's life in middle and high school that Janet constantly thinks about it (the two nearly identical recollections of Janet's prom, for instance). What 30 year old dwells on something that happened that far in the past? I'm extremely disappointed in the author for using a trite, unflattering cliche for the friend. Let her be a gold digger, but did she need to be the sort of false friend who steals all the attention for herself, is jealous of other women and makes snide, not-so-carefully-disguised put-downs to them? Couldn't she have been a supportive friend, albeit one with some unflattering qualities? I am so, so sick of women being portrayed this way, but I am even more tired of reading about the same character types over and over and over.

Then there's the writing. The book has (if I counted correctly) six points of view. Six. Janet, Dean/Dennis, CEO Brother, Slimy Lawyer, Gold Digging friend and (at the final hour) CEO Brother's wife. This is not A Song of Ice and Fire here. Perhaps we'd have been treated to more in-depth characters had the author focused on one or two of them only. Multiple POVs are common in suspense novels, but there was absolutely nothing suspenseful about this book. At no time was the protagonist in any danger. No one would die if she didn't find the evidence. The bomb would not explode on Page 203. Those are all acceptable reasons for jumping to person to person. The author leaves you mid-action so you want to know whether Joe's hiding space gets discovered just as the book switches to Gretchen's new problem. That is suspense. The problems get larger and larger, the danger higher and higher. It is not wondering when on earth something interesting will happen.

The author also has a deplorable habit of letting all her characters sound alike. Worst, they all have the habit of ending a sentence with comma, name: "What are you doing, Jon?" "Nothing. We went over this before, Paul." "Well, if you say so, Jon." "Trust me, Paul." No one talks that way.

I also question the research the author did when it comes to how Federal agencies operate. I don't believe anyone with a criminal record could ever get hired onto the FBI or Treasury Department. I also don't believe for a moment that our hero is the only person who understands high finance. FBI prospective agents must either have training as a doctor, lawyer, CPA, computer science/technology, languages, or "diversified" (often meaning several years' experience in local law enforcement). I think a CPA would manage to wade through the concepts. Then again, it was vain Dean/Dennis who had this thought, and we already know how he is. I'm unsure whether a court would authorize hacking or bugging of computers. I'm fairly certain that the case-solving information the duo obtained from hacking a computer that did not belong to the company under investigation would not be admissible in court.

Then there's the dog. You know, the one they plastered on the cover? I expected the dog (given the title and cover) to play a more prominent role. He did not. He was simply a prop--a prop Janet didn't bother to obtain on her own (he was a gift from said ex). Yes, I purchased the book to read a dog mystery. Guilty as charged.

Honestly, I was positive this was either a first novel or a self-published Kindle novel. Imagine my surprise when I saw Astor is a best-selling author. Not to me. Not to me anymore.


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To Catch a Bad Guy Janet Maple Series Book 1 edition by Marie Astor Romance eBooks Reviews

The main characters were annoying. All the males in the story thought they were Gods gift to women and if they were having a bad day they would go some where like a bar where the women would drool over them. The main female was a insecure wimp. She spent most of her time whining about how bad her life was or letting her "best friend" treat her like a door mat. No sane adult person would hang around with a person who constantly put them down. The story was also not very good. The idea of taking down a big company for corruption is a good idea, but there is no way they could have done so in just a few short weeks. This was placed in the romance section and there is no romance to be found in any of it
Now there is a career choice! Size 6 Janet ( must be important as her dress size is mentioned at least 5 times) has had her shares of ups and downs since graduating cum laud from Columbia. She doesn't date since he was fired by her main squeeze of 5 years, but manages drinks and dinners at some of the most elite $$$ bistros and restaurants in Manhattan. If she didn't have so many personal insecurities and childhood hangers-on who call her "friend" but mostly use her as the target for meanness, Jnet could enjoy herself and her dog Baxter a lot more. Dennis/Dean an undercover Treasury Department criminal investigator, is the only bright ray of hope to her otherwise dismal life. Well, she does seem to enjoy a variety of martini's, but it is hard to guild a life on stuffed olives. I really do recommend this book, but it tends to drag in spots.
185 pages of who's dating who, types of dress styles, and thoughts of my BFF and getting married until finally getting to the investigative adventure, which was so predictable and unfulfilling.
Instead of an adventurous book based on real criminalsm, it was more of a juvenile level text of the aforementioned. NOT WORTH BUYING. I could derive the same from watching the staged real life adventures of a BFF project on TV. Poorly written, very minimal intrigue and ultimately boring. You'll zipped through this, not because you are interested but to end the misery in order to read well written books. Thinking about it, run...
Stagnated plot, strange chapters from secondary character POV's (Point of Views) that didn't move the plot along and typesetting/page layout that ruined my reading experience. These are just a few of the things I have to say about this novel.

The plot synopsis above sounded really interesting, but that's where the 'interesting' begins and ends. In addition to a plot that plodded along, the author actually gave away who the 'bad guy' was early on, making reading the rest of the book unnecessary! Another thing the author decided to do was to use the cover with the cute Jack Russel Terrier as a sort of hook to lure the reader in. But the dog doesn't figure in the book in any way that's significant. Now, I know authors 'Cover-Lie' as a regular habit, but I'm a sucker for a mystery with a funny pet involved and was very disappointed that I didn't see him more.

In the end, this book is pretty zzzz-zzzzzz-zzzzzzzzzzz...Need I say more?
This book was slow. There wasn't much detail and at the end major plot parts were skipped. Displeased with the abrupt ending. None of the story lines were "tied up" or finished. I really can't recommend this book. It gets one star because it was free, otherwise it would have received ZERO stars.
I am glad that I did not pay for this book. It was not badly written it just boring. There was no suspense, romance or even a good mystery. I will not be reading any more of her books. I am not sure what others are seeing but it just did not "Catch" me.
Part of me wants to give this novel one star, but I did finish reading it, so two it is.

Janet Maple (I keep wanting to call her Marple!) is a 29YO lawyer who was "downsized" from the NYC DA's office and finds herself working as an assistant to estranged friend Lisa at a finance firm. She's surprised no real work is involved with the job. Later she becomes suspicious about the firm's activities and supposedly--honestly, I didn't think she did much--investigated their dealings. Dean/Dennis, a Treasury agent, works undercover at Bostoff in order to uncover enough evidence to bring charges against the company. The two meet--Janet none the wiser until late in the novel--and later "work" to gather the evidence after Dean/Dennis essentially blackmails Janet into providing evidence. They're attracted to one another, but there's no real romance to speak of. The crooks get caught (supposedly through stellar investigation by the duo) no one involved is actually punished except for the cardboard bad guys. Overall, it's a pretty unsatisfactory read.

First, none of the characters are likable. Astor paints Janet as a "strong" woman who knows her mind, but Janet spends the majority of her time fretting over her lack of marital prospects with men she had no real interest in to begin with. We're subjected to a flashback--twice!--of why she didn't get the prom date she really wanted (hint she was too spineless to say yes). At one point, she gets ready to attend a party with the desire to "hold her own" and look attractive. The very next moment, she gets angry because her mother suggests a more flattering hairstyle because--you guessed it!--she doesn't care what she looks like. Her ex-boyfriend essentially stole her work and used it to get promoted (while she got fired) yet she never feels anger towards him. Instead she "misses" him. I read the entire book and I'm still not sure that she actually understood what happened with him. Oh, and she's a size 6 who feels like she's fat. A. Size. Six.

I think Astor intended for us to find the male lead attractive. Instead, he's a vain, conceited jerk who considers himself God's gift to women. We get to see inside his head, so we know he likes to receive their "adoration" and have flings. No problem with that. It's the puffed up pride he feels about this (he doesn't come across as respecting these women much) that bothered made him unlikable. He apparently has a sense of humor, but we only have Janet's opinion on this (we aren't treated to it). I'd take the claim with a grain of salt.

The secondary caricatures--I mean characters!--are as nicely corrugated as you could ever want from cardboard. We have the greedy CEO (later woobiefied), the feckless brother, the slimy lawyer and the gold digging bimbo friend. I'm too harsh on the brothers. They weren't as horrible as I make out, but there was nothing unexpected to their character. The lawyer was not only a crook, but a womanizing implied date rapist. The gold digger (Janet's estranged friend) is exactly that. She sets out to get engaged to one of the brothers because he has money. She also apparently so ruined Janet's life in middle and high school that Janet constantly thinks about it (the two nearly identical recollections of Janet's prom, for instance). What 30 year old dwells on something that happened that far in the past? I'm extremely disappointed in the author for using a trite, unflattering cliche for the friend. Let her be a gold digger, but did she need to be the sort of false friend who steals all the attention for herself, is jealous of other women and makes snide, not-so-carefully-disguised put-downs to them? Couldn't she have been a supportive friend, albeit one with some unflattering qualities? I am so, so sick of women being portrayed this way, but I am even more tired of reading about the same character types over and over and over.

Then there's the writing. The book has (if I counted correctly) six points of view. Six. Janet, Dean/Dennis, CEO Brother, Slimy Lawyer, Gold Digging friend and (at the final hour) CEO Brother's wife. This is not A Song of Ice and Fire here. Perhaps we'd have been treated to more in-depth characters had the author focused on one or two of them only. Multiple POVs are common in suspense novels, but there was absolutely nothing suspenseful about this book. At no time was the protagonist in any danger. No one would die if she didn't find the evidence. The bomb would not explode on Page 203. Those are all acceptable reasons for jumping to person to person. The author leaves you mid-action so you want to know whether Joe's hiding space gets discovered just as the book switches to Gretchen's new problem. That is suspense. The problems get larger and larger, the danger higher and higher. It is not wondering when on earth something interesting will happen.

The author also has a deplorable habit of letting all her characters sound alike. Worst, they all have the habit of ending a sentence with comma, name "What are you doing, Jon?" "Nothing. We went over this before, Paul." "Well, if you say so, Jon." "Trust me, Paul." No one talks that way.

I also question the research the author did when it comes to how Federal agencies operate. I don't believe anyone with a criminal record could ever get hired onto the FBI or Treasury Department. I also don't believe for a moment that our hero is the only person who understands high finance. FBI prospective agents must either have training as a doctor, lawyer, CPA, computer science/technology, languages, or "diversified" (often meaning several years' experience in local law enforcement). I think a CPA would manage to wade through the concepts. Then again, it was vain Dean/Dennis who had this thought, and we already know how he is. I'm unsure whether a court would authorize hacking or bugging of computers. I'm fairly certain that the case-solving information the duo obtained from hacking a computer that did not belong to the company under investigation would not be admissible in court.

Then there's the dog. You know, the one they plastered on the cover? I expected the dog (given the title and cover) to play a more prominent role. He did not. He was simply a prop--a prop Janet didn't bother to obtain on her own (he was a gift from said ex). Yes, I purchased the book to read a dog mystery. Guilty as charged.

Honestly, I was positive this was either a first novel or a self-published novel. Imagine my surprise when I saw Astor is a best-selling author. Not to me. Not to me anymore.