I really, really liked the first two hundred plus pages of Lisa Scottoline's Daddy's Girl. I have dog-eared pages where I was going to point out good passages and moments when I thought the writer had presented an insight into our current world, but I'm not covering any of it. Why not? Because words cannot describe how much I hated the final hundred or so pages.
For over half the book the plot moves well, and the characters are interesting. And then there's a chase. The heroine is on the run because she's about to be arrested for a crime she didn't commit. The cops eventually catch her; she escapes. The cops catch her again, this time she kicks one of them in the shin and escapes. They catch her again, and then just when she's about to be shoved into the patrol car, she again kicks her captor in the shin and escapes. Give me a break!
There is one final plot twist at the end, but before it occurs around sixty pages are devoted to tying up every conceivable loose end and explaining everything the heroine has learned from her adventures. No one's going to read Daddy's Girl without getting any message Ms Scottoline wants to convey. So, at that point with everything wrapped up tighter than a Christmas present and every lesson clarified for me, did I care about a final twist in the romantic line? Not on your life!
Will I ever read another book by Lisa Scottoline? When hell freezes over, I might think about doing so—but I doubt it.
