Senate Proof - Logan Snyder

**DISCLAIMER** I received this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review. So that's what I'll aim to do.

I had a lot of issues with the book, some of which I think could have been cleaned up with a bit more editing. First, all the major plot points are there. The book follows a set of characters. At the center of the action is the McAllister Distillery, an illegal bootlegging distillery in suburban Virginia. John McAllister, the reigning patriarch of the illegal empire and family has unwittingly allowed the operation to run away from him as other players in the operation attempt to wrest control of the operation, and its wealth away from him.

Enter Caroline, a beautiful girl out to investigate her father's murder 20 years prior in the town. Enter Jackson, a handsome young law student out to get a summer job in town, who's interviewer is inconveniently murdered the night before the interview. Other involved people, Ron McAllister, John's erstwhile son who after 20 years of exile is trying to get back to the head of the organization, Senator Windgate who is planning his retirement from the Senate (and the distillery), and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Michael Abramson.

Sounds good right? Yeah, it should be. But it's not. So here are some of the problems.

While the characters should be interesting they aren't. Their motivations are always too convenient and too two-dimensional. At the end of the book, I'm not even sure I could tell you what purpose Jackson even served. He's a cute law student. He hits on Caroline. After she's "discovered" by McAllister, she agrees to go away for the weekend with Jackson. So after her dog has been shot and her apartment ransacked, she's what... looking forward to a weekend of boozing and horse track betting? After she's revealed at the end of the book as a federal agent, this makes even less sense.

She gets kidnapped in Louisville by some unnamed member of the distillery group and is then inexplicably passed from place to place as the plot tries to make you fear her ultimate demise. Jackson, pledging to rescue her, also goes to an old law firm, then someone's home, and then finally back to the distillery to try to rescue her. All the while he has no plan and no actual skills to do this. In the end, he's saved by the Chief Justice and Caroline. What?

Amidst all this nonsensical plodding along of the plot, the writing gives out inexplicable levels of detail. Here's an example: (after being held captive in a dark room, the light switch is turned on and)

"She barely made out the outline of a large cabinet against the wall just a few feet away. Blindly, she felt her way to it and wedged herself tightly against the side. Luckily, a blue tarp was next to her and she eased her way under it without making much noise."

The captor then believes she has somehow escaped and sounds the alarm. I really didn't know what to make out of this whole scene.

Here's another one: (our heroine Caroline has been beaten)

"Because of the darkness, Caroline hadn't notice that she was blind in her right eye. It was swollen shut. She reached up to touch it, but winced in pain as she grazed the wound. That explained the blood on her mouth. It must have been running down her face for quite some time."

So hopefully you get the point that a lot of the narration was just oversharing the details. Even the character development was painfully spelled out for the reader. I believe that if the author has to tell me that the character has grown as a person and therefore that's why he's now taking action, that really is a red flag that perhaps the author didn't do a good enough job showing me the character and letting me conclude on their own that he has now grown as a person.

Overall, I thought the writing should have been tighter. For example, when we are first introduced to Jackson, we see him drive to Notre Dame, get dumped for another guy by his girlfriend Samantha, get beat up by said guy, and return to Virginia in disgrace. A more effective introduction would have been to meet Jackson, at his home in Virginia, nursing his wounds. The entire part of the trip to see her was completely overkill. Although he does call Samantha later in the novel, this plot point never develops into anything. I wasn't even sure if I was supposed to care about or remember her at all.

The story and the writing show promise, so I don't want to seem completely down on it. It reminded me a bit of Steve Berry's earlier work that started out a bit sloppy and again too convenient until he got a feel for his style and character. I wouldn't completely say no to reading another Logan Snyder book again, but it won't be something that makes its way to the top of my to-read pile.

1 .5/5 Stars.