{"id":962,"date":"2011-06-10T06:53:08","date_gmt":"2011-06-10T11:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/?p=962"},"modified":"2011-06-10T07:05:57","modified_gmt":"2011-06-10T12:05:57","slug":"book-review-and-giveaway-purgatory-chasm-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/?p=962","title":{"rendered":"Book Review and Giveaway: Purgatory Chasm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest review by Austin Morgan<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Purgatory<\/a><\/strong>Steve Ulfelder’s Purgatory Chasm is a great way to start off a writing career.\u00a0 I get to read a lot of debut novels, frequently before they are published.\u00a0 I feel this gives me more experience in identifying some of the foibles new authors frequently work through in the first books.\u00a0 I didn’t see any of the typical beginner jitters from Steve Ulfelder.\u00a0 Then I googled Steve and found out he is not kicking off a writing career, he has been a journalist for 20 years.\u00a0 Of course converting journalism to novel writing is a difficult skill also and Steve has speed past the competition.<\/p>\n

What stuck me most about Purgatory Chasm was that it was obvious that Steve knows Conway Sax very well.<\/p>\n

Conway Sax strangely reminds me a lot of Rooster Cogburn from True Grit.\u00a0 He charges into the fray without a plan and some how comes out on the other side mostly unscathed.\u00a0 He also will follow a job no matter what it costs him both financially or health wise even after his client is dead.<\/p>\n

The mystery is deep and satisfying.\u00a0 And while Steve has tried to hide the fact, the mystery is not what this book is really about.\u00a0 Because I googled Steve I happen to know that he is working on a sequel to Purgatory Chasm.\u00a0 I am very interested where he will be taking this character.<\/p>\n

So why did I only give this book a 4 out of 5?\u00a0 There wasn’t a sympathetic character in the novel.\u00a0 There were a few characters on the up and up, but those were sidekicks that did not change much during the story.\u00a0 There is a hint that Conway is really trying to turn a new leaf, except he still doesn’t see anything wrong with breaking someone’s nose if he feels one of his friends has been wronged.<\/p>\n

I recommend this book for anyone looking for a good mystery, especially if they like gritty characters.<\/p>\n

Rating: 4\/5<\/p>\n

Title: Purgatory Chasm<\/a>\"\"
\nAuthor: Steve Ulfelder
\nGenre: Mystery
\nPublication Date: May 31, 2011
\nISBN: 978-0-312-67292-8<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is another Goodreads.com\u2019s First Reads<\/a> book.\u00a0 This is a great service in which you can sign up to receive books either before or just after they are released.<\/p>\n

The Contest:
\nTo win this copy of this book leave a comment on this post.<\/p>\n

Rules:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Only comments left at http:\/\/christineamsden.com will be entered in the contest<\/li>\n
  2. You will receive the exact same Advanced Review Copy I received from the publisher<\/li>\n
  3. You must live in the US to win<\/li>\n
  4. Contest ends on Sunday June 19, 2011 at 11:59 PM CT<\/li>\n
  5. The winner will be contacted via e-mail, the winner has 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be selected.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Guest review by Austin Morgan Steve Ulfelder’s Purgatory Chasm is a great way to start off a writing career.\u00a0 I get to read a lot of debut novels, frequently before they are published.\u00a0 I feel this gives me more experience in identifying some of the foibles new authors frequently work through in the first books.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-im-reading","category-mysterysuspense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=962"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":998,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions\/998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}