Riptide (CSI: Miami) (ISBN 0743480589)

lame writing, but good mystery:
the mystery is about a wierd serial killer with an obsession with water, latex, and a cheesy old horror movie. sounds wierd, and it is. but serial murderers aren't exactly normal. the mystery works. but writing it down ruins it. as far as i can tell, all the flaws in the writing are because the book was trying to mimic a tv show. the author tries to make the dialogue into witty banter, but fails miserably, so everything anyone says just sounds very lame. and the book is full of nauseatingly boring lectures. they find latex under a victim's fingernail, so we get treated to a huge speech about rubber and the proteins latex is made of. then we hear about latex again when a witness is allergic to it. i'm sick of latex. but that wasn't all they talked about. i had to skip way too many boring, useless lectures. now, i'm a big fan of csi. and i like learnning. but the information you get by watching csi isn't in fifteen minute long lectures about random topics like latex. it's about stuff that actually pertains to the case, and takes up about a couple sentences, not two pages. but if you like reading bad novels and don't care whether the writing's good, then you'll like the mystery. it's not amazing, but it's good enough to keep you turning the pages. it was good enough to keep me reading, even through the terrible writing.

What a Great Page Turner I really Couldn't Put It Down!!:
I really enjoyed the book. Some of the details left me not wanting to eat sometimes because the material was a little to grafic for my taste but then again that is what CSI is all about. However, the graffics not with standing I still enjoyed the book tremendously and honestly was very surprised at the end.

It's Hot in Miami:
This is the first CSI: MIAMI title I've read by author Donn Cortez, and I truly enjoyed it. In my opinion, Mr. Cortez does a much better job than author Max Allan Collins at characterization and getting inside the minds of both the CSI players and the people involved in the particular case. The plot line of RIPTIDE is strange but believable, with a perpetrator who is obsessed with a merman from an old film. The only thing that kept this book from being a 5-star read was the ending, which, although plausable, was too quickly wrapped up in only a few sentences.

A fast-paced story:
This is the first book of the CSI series that I have read. This story immediately hooked me in the first few paragraphs. While the character development of the CSI team and the suspects is really good, sometimes the details around the actual work of the investigators was very technical. However, the detailed aspects added to the whole story development. I recommend this book because it is a fun and fast mystery with great characters.