The November selection for our Mystery Bookclub was by a local author, Las Vegas Metro police detective Kim Thomas. Vegas: One Cop's Journey is set in current day Vegas with a new recruit, Cam Madden, dealing with the pressures of his job the police department. As Cam advances through the department, he must find the right balance of work and home life. The novel reads almost like a true crime novel as we go through Cam’s daily work life and the addition of his home life, dating paramedic Karrie Mae, seemed to be a bit thin. To me, being a Las Vegas native, I was visualizing almost all the locations (like I do on the television show CSI) and I would find myself thinking “…oh, I know where that street corner is with that panhandler!” Definitely made the novel more fun to read and I thought it was an alright novel and looked forward to listening to his talk.
Let me tell you, I was very impressed by Detective Thomas. He did not go up there and limit his talk to cop stories. He spoke of the writing process and how he came to write this novel. I was even more impressed by the fact that in addition to working a full time job with Metro, he got an MFA in creative writing with UNLV and this novel was his MFA project, which got published! After hearing this, I could forgive the small discrepancies, especially since he knows his own weaker writing aspects. And what a great speaker…sometimes, authors are not the best speakers (they must be saving themselves for the written page) but he spoke for a good hour and fifteen minutes. And we did get a couple of additional cop stories out of it as well! We had to stop him for the book signing portion but I believe he could have gone on. For more info on Detective Thomas and his book, check his website (which includes an interview he did with KNPR) at http://www.vegasonecopsjourney.com/index.html
No comments:
Post a Comment