Worst Book Ever?

For a long time The Bridges of Madison County has held the position of worst book I have ever read. There has been some pretty strong competition, The Loop by the dude who wrote the Horse Whisperer (another horrid book), all of the Left Behind series, The Da Vinci Code and of course, good old Atlanta Nights.

This weekend I read something so thoroughly awful that it may jump into first place. At first I thought it was just pure bad writing from a new writer but according to the book cover the author, Ann Major, is a best selling author and a founder of the RWA. Then I thought well hell, maybe she's sick of writing real books and wrote a parody but no, according to her website she wrote this thing to call attention to her perceived problems with the USA/Mexico border.

It's called The Girl With the Golden Gun (see, can you blame me for thinking it was a bad joke?) and the hero is called, swear to God, Shanghai Knight. The heroine is called Mia and they have a little girl called Vanilla. No, really, it's true. There's also a character called Kinky.

The book is just pure hate from start to finish. Just about everyone hates everyone else, unless of course they're a chick chasing a dude that doesn't want them, or a couple of times a dude chasing a chick that doesn't want them. There's usually some hate mixed in there also.

The creepiest moment, in a book filled with murder, torture, abasement of women and stupidity, is when Shanghai dresses as Mia's mother to get into a Mexican prison to talk to her. There he is, in drag, calling himself her mother and he puts his hands up her dress and starts trying to get into her panties. Squick!