Twenty Years Later by Charlie Donlea

​   This is my third read by Donlea and the first time I saw him mentioned in New York Times. NYT is notoriously (and quite tediously) highbrow so it was very odd to see his book there, because Donlea is very solidly a midlist author published by a very midlist publisher. It’s almost like NYT wanted to throw a bone to the great unwashed and plucked a random thriller out of the midst.
    Is any of it relevant? No, not really, just peculiar. So now on to the book itself, which was very much in line with Donlea’s other books but longer. And much too long at 400 pages for the beach read which it is. It even takes place over July 4th’s time.
     This unwieldy and unwarranted length, which Donlea produced by padding the book with numerous place descriptions (quite decently to be fair, making his locations to be additional characters) and numerous oversimplifications and overexplanations, which were not so decent. Being a midlist author, Donlea already peddles to the lower hanging fruit of an audience, but he obviously wants to make sure he covers everyone, everyfreakingone, but overexplaining every single plot aspect in repetitive pre-sliced fashion that might seem anywhere from annoying to insulting to many seasoned genre fans.
       Length aside and some questionable oversimplifications aside, this was actually quite entertaining. Pure popcorn fiction, but fun enough, with some fun twists thrown in.
       The basic plot involves a popular investigative journalist, Avery, with her own tv show and her own dark family secrets who sets off to investigate a twenty-year-old unsolved murder of a popular thriller writer who appears to have been modeled on Donlea himself, at least aspirationally (not the character’s sordid personal life, just him as an author of popular best-selling thrillers). In fact, Donlea appears so enamored by the concept of writing the writers of cheap commercial thrillers, he puts more of them in the book, where you’d think one would have been enough.
     Anyway, Avery teams up with a retired special agent who once worked the case and has secret motives of his own for this pairing. Sparks do that thing sparks do in books like this and now the two of them have to contend with juggling their projects (secret and otherwise) and their passions. Ta-da. That’s about it.
      Too long, but it reads quickly and entertains sufficiently, much like the author’s other books. This one appears to be slightly more sophisticated of a narrative, but it never rises above the comfortably average place that Donlea has proclaimed as his comfort zone for a while now. So fun enough, nothing special writing wise, but some nice twists. Thanks Netgalley.