Book – Trust Me

Trust Me by Earl Javorsky (Story Plant, 2015)  Jeff Fenner needs to face his demons.  The cops are after him and so is a drug dealer.  When his sister commits suicide Jeff refuses to believe.  As he tries to dig himself out of the hole his life has become he will begin digging into his sister’s death.  All that leads him towards a beautiful but trouble woman named Holly and a self help cult in Beverly Hills.  It turns out the cult and his sister’s death may be linked to a series of other apparent suicides.

This is Javorsky’s second novel and the second one I’ve reviewed (“Down Solo” review).  Sadly, his second attempt doesn’t meet the standard of his first.  While the blurbs point to Fenner as the main character, you would be hard pressed to come to that conclusion by reading the story.  There’s Holly, and Ron the newspaper reporter, and Joe the cop.  They all get their own story lines and seemed to me that they were at least the equal if not more important that Jeff at times.  There’s nothing wrong with that as a story telling technique, it’s just not what you expect after you read the cover description.

The other thing that bothered me was that some of the elements of the story got rather muddled.  Early on, Jeff is in trouble with a drug dealer.  Enough trouble that they bust down his door and trash the place looking for drugs and or money he owes them.  Then they just disappear for most of the book.  It feels like Javorsky forgot that problem and comes up with a pat and, for me, utterly unsatisfying conclusion for it.  I would compare the feeling to cobwebs that cling to you while you are trying to make your way towards the exit.  Rather than following a good story to the end, you spend your time wishing all these little distractions would just get out of your way.

Why I Liked It : Javorsky remains a solid story teller.  Once I brush away the annoyances I enjoyed the story.

Why You Will Like It : Jeff and Holly and Ron and Joe are solid believable characters with whom you’ll connect.  He puts them in some interesting positions and creates a solid little suspense novel.

In the end, “Trust Me” is a pretty good read.  Just not quite as good as its predecessor.

Rating – *** Worth A Look