Fatal mistakes in mystery fiction

For a story to work properly you've got to be able to trust the writer. There are quite a lot of things that go into that trust but right now I am just talking about getting things right. Of course we can't get things right all the time. We all make mistakes and we get the wrong information and we process it incorrectly and we end up saying ridiculous things from time to time so I am not talking about perfection.

What I am talking about is a basic flaw. If your skiffy universe says there is no faster than light drive and then you end up in another star system after traveling for two minutes well something is wrong.

I'm also not talking about conflict here. If you have a character who is an upstanding doctor who still makes housecalls and everyone loves him and then you find out that he is prescribing medication because he's being blackmailed by the pharmaceutical rep, well that is conflict. That makes an interesting character, an interesting setup and you want to find out what is going to happen and how he is going to be able to get out of this situation. Or how someone else is going to make him get out of it.

What I am talking about is this. I joined an online book club, actually because they featured Cory's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town so I thought they might have good taste. When I joined I signed up for six or seven different books per week, mystery, romance, prepub, skiffy, horror, teen and fiction. I think that's it.

Recently, the featured mystery book was Indelible by Karin Slaughter. This is the way the book was billed, although quite frankly I don't read these things in general, I prefer to find out for myself what the book is about

...an officer is shot point-blank in the Grant County police station and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver is wounded, setting off a terrifying hostage situation with medical examiner Sara Linton at the center. Working outside the station, Lena Adams, newly reinstated to the force, and Frank Wallace, Jeffrey's second in command, must try to piece together who the shooter is and how to rescue their friends before Jeffrey dies. For the sins of the past have caught up with Sara and Jeffrey--with a vengeance...

Sounds exciting, right? Well look at this excerpt from the beginning of the book;

There were two young men in the lobby, one of them leaning against the back wall, the other standing in front of Marla. Sara took the standing one to be Jeffrey's visitor. Smith was young, probably Brad's age, and dressed in a quilted black jacket that was zipped closed despite the late August heat. His head was shaved and from what she could make of his body under the heavy coat, he was fit and well muscled. He kept scanning the room, his eyes furiously darting around, never resting his gaze on one person for long. He added the front door to his rotation every second time, checking the street. There was definitely something military in his bearing, and for some reason, his general demeanor put Sara on edge.

She looked around the room, taking in what Smith was seeing. Jeffrey had stopped at one of the desks to help a patrolman. He slid his paddle holster to his back as he sat on the edge of the desk and typed something into the computer. Brad was still talking over by the coffeemaker, his hand resting on the top of the mace spray in his belt. She counted five more cops, all of them busy writing reports or entering information into their computers. A sense of danger coursed through Sara's body like a bolt of lightning. Everything in her line of vision became too sharply focused.

The front door made a sucking sound as it opened and Matt Hogan walked in. Marla said, "There you are. We've been waiting for you."

The young man put his hand inside his coat, and Sara screamed,

"Jeffrey!"

They all turned to look at her, but Sara was watching Smith. In one fluid motion he pulled out a sawed-off shotgun, pointed it at Matt's face, and squeezed both triggers.

All right so I think this lady, Sara, is a cop. She is the partner of the Jeffrey guy anyway, near as I can tell. She's in a police station, there are police everywhere and this extremely suspicious person comes in and sets off her spidey sense. The guy is wearing a heavy coat in August, zipped up, he's acting hinky, time is kind of objective but someone has time to enter the station, someone else has time to greet them, the perp has time to unzip his coat, get his shotgun out and shoot someone, which must a few seconds, right? All she does is yell Jeffrey's name, rather useless behavior, and then who knows what happens because I stopped reading.

What about yelling get down? I'm thinking this chick has had some sort of emergency training, she should be good for something besides standing around acting like the heroine of a bad romance. What about yelling "he's got a gun?"

I don't know, maybe it's just me but the whole scene feels fake and contrived to me. Instead of feeling bad for the guy who got shot in the face I am disgusted with the woman who I should be bonding with, the main character. The only thing I can trust now is that the writer will be writing more irritating scenes like this one so I say no thank you and put this book on my list of books I don't want to read.