The Way Life Should Be

May 23, 2009 - The Way Life Should Be (Terry Shaw). The author is a newspaper reporter and editor who started the novel for a writing competition run by a social networking Web site called Gather.com. He won first prize, which was to have his book published.

The story involves a newspaper editor named John Quinn who returns to his hometown in Maine to raise his family. Then, Quinn's childhood friend is murdered. Quinn, not satisfied with the police investigation, puts his own life - and the life of his family - in danger to find out the truth.

I'm not going to get any further into the plot because I'd hate to give anything away. I will say that the book is not horrible. It took me three months to read it mainly because I was busy with school and work and didn't have the energy to read. But, you could also read into that that the book was not gripping enough for me to make time to read it during that period. I'd had it sitting on my shelf for a good two years before finally picking it up, and I don't really feel like that was a bad thing.

I will also add that, in the final pages of the book, the author lets his contempt for television news show through. Not cool.