ARC REVIEW: The Car Bomb – by T.V. LoCicero

Title: The Car Bomb
(Detroit I’m Dyin Trilogy #1)
Author: T.V. LoCicero
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Crime
First published: May 7th 2013
Publisher: TLC Media
Finished reading: April 27th 2017
Pages: 220

*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by the author in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

April ARC month is slowly coming to an end and this is probably one of the last titles I will be able to read before the month is over. I’ve had this first book of a trilogy on my ARC list for a while… The Car Bomb belongs to one of my favorite genres and I was looking forward to what looked like an action-packed thriller. Unfortunately, I ended up having a hard time reading this story. It’s without doubt a superfast read and I managed to finish it in less than a day, but I can’t say I actually enjoyed it. During most of the story the different chapters just didn’t connect together and I had to struggle to follow the plot. Most of the story felt messy, chaotic and some things just didn’t make sense… Things did improve in the final part, which I enjoyed considerably better, but I have to be honest and say I’m not sure if I would have made it to that part if this wouldn’t have been an ARC. This wasn’t my biggest problem with The Car Bomb though. It wasn’t the excessive swearing either, although it did started to frustrate me. No, it was the main character of this story: Frank. Words cannot describe how much I dislike that cheating (note: on both his wife AND mistress), womanizing, drunk, arrogant bastard. It was practically hate at first sight and it was really hard for me to try and enjoy a story I had already issues with having to deal with a main character I simply can’t stand. I mean, he is a popular TV star, so he gets away with all the despicable things he does?! Not in my world. I guess male readers might be less offended by his character, although I sure do hope they don’t take him as an example. As you might have guessed, this story definitely wasn’t for me even though the general idea behind this story did sound interesting.

Frank DeFauw is a very popular TV anchor with a colorful personal life full of booze, drugs and womanizing. After a car bomb kills a mother and her two children, Frank decides to investigate the case and stumbles upon something a whole lot bigger than just a simple bomb. He is on the border of discovering a big corruption scandal, and one of the persons involved might actually be one of his best friends. Frank is faced with a complicated decision to either discover the truth or protect his friend and family… Because some people are trying very hard to keep the truth from coming out, and things are becoming dangerous.

I normally enjoy reading thriller reads, but The Car Bomb was definitely not for me. Male readers might enjoy this story better than I did, but I just couldn’t recover from my VERY negative feelings about the main character. I don’t care that he is a famous TV anchor; both his behavior and character in general are simply inexcusable and disgusting. The case itself might be interesting and it does have potential, but unfortunately I just couldn’t enjoy this story.