Death becomes Us All

by Tom Croft

A small town police detective in search of revenge for the rape of his daughter attempts to pull off the perfect murder. His attempts to cover up his actions leads him into a tangled web of murder and deceit at the hands of a new brand of domestic terrorists. Pursued by the the terrorists, police, and FBI he has only days to clear himself and prevent the mass release of a biologic disease.

174 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 15, 2010

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Death Becomes Us All" is, for the most part, a fun little book. A Frederick, Maryland, police sergeant named Bob Smith has troubles galore. His teenaged daughter is beaten up and raped. He solves that problem pretty quickly, but then people start turning-up dead. Worse still, one of them is tied to the anthrax research lab at Fort Detrick's U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). Pretty soon, Bob is ensnared in a web that leads from fellow law enforcement officers, to his ex-wife, to a lovely, mysterious stranger.

Oh, yeah: and Bob's really, really sick.

The story is compelling, and some of the characters are well-drawn.

What drove me absolutely nuts while reading this book is it's only casual acquaintance with written English.

Did you see what I did there? It's is a contraction for "it is." The possessive is "its." I made an intentional mistake. There were tons of unintentional mistakes in "Death Becomes Us All." God, I hope they were unintentional, anyway.

Basic stuff, like spelling: "percaset" is not a drug, while "Percocet" IS a drug.

I don't know whether this is just an issue with the e-book version--maybe somebody's eighth-grader typed the e-book into the computer. I get that everyone makes the occasional grammatical error, but this was just exkrushiating too reed at times.

(sic)

[Cheryl Goldyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nicely paced game of cops and robbers, where small-town cop meets terrorists out to get rich quick. Buff would be everyone's favorite TV cop ... Almost ethical until someone crosses him or his family. Cleverly woven, this story is a mix of good cops, bad cops -- good Feds, bad Feds -- as well as an assortment of vile and honorable private citizens. The author (in spite of a handful of distracting poor edits) has a talent to bring tears and cheers from readers. The characters are solid, some relentless, some humorous, and some deserving of a violent end to their worthless existence. The author did seem to lose a grip on reality when our hero, on the threshold of death, repeatedly downs mega doses of strong pain killers with a half bottle of 90-proof booze, and can still put all the clues together, and shoot three bad guys in the head from across the room when he can barely stand on his own. A little far fetched, but definitely entertaining from the first page to the last.

[Christy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was terrible. The story was boring, there was no "good guy" to root for, the characters were unlikable and uninteresting, and the editing was awful. A dirty cop commits murder, his drug addict doctor best friend tells him he's going to die, and it gets worse from there. There were 'nicknames' throughout the book, and 90% of the time a 'nickname' was written, there were 'unnecessary quotes' around the person's name. It was distracting to read. And there were other editing errors. I'd suggest skipping this one.