Title: The Call of the Mild (Psych #3)
Author: William Rabkin
Genre: Mystery
How I got the book: I bought it on my Kindle
Summary (from Amazon):
Shawn Spencer has always hated the wilderness-by which he means anything outside the delivery radius of his favorite pizza place. But Psych has been hired to solve a baffling case of industrial espionage, and the only way to catch the spy is to join their client’s bonding retreat-a grueling seven day backpacking mountain trek.
But when one of the campers turns up with a bullet in the head, Shawn and Gus soon realize that sheer cliffs, rampaging bears, and freeze- dried pineapple aren’t the greatest threats they face.
My Review:
I love the TV show Psych and considering that the author of the book series helped write the show, I thought the book would be great as well.
Call of the Mild is the third book in the five-book series and while the first two were pretty good, this one was my least favorite.
The case took a long time to figure out and then everything fell into place all at once in the last twenty pages of the novel. I don’t even understand how Shawn Spencer, the protagonist, came across the conclusion anyway.
Shawn and his friend, Gus, get stuck on a retreat lost in the wilderness with a bunch of lawyers who work together in a firm. They all hate and distrust each other making the journey hostile and not fun at all. The lawyers start to be picked off one by one and they realize the killer is among them.
The premise of the book was interesting, but I just don’t think it was tied together very well. The case was introduced in a very different way in the beginning of the novel where a new character was introduced, but he was barely in the book. A few chapters were based around him, but that was it.
Plus, two of the secondary characters, Carlton Lassiter and Juliet O’Hara, were barely in the novel as well. I wish they had a bigger part because Shawn and Gus barely interacted with them.
This book did have less typos in it than the other two, but plot-wise I would have to say that this book was the least well-written.
The Call of the Mild by William Rabkin gets 3 out of 5 stars.
Favorite Quote:
“He’d read enough Greek tragedies and seen enough Twilight Zone episodes to know that trying to avoid your fate only brought you to it faster.” –William Rabkin, Call of the Mild
