Booksneeze: Nick of Time

Nick of Time by Tim Downs


(From the back cover)
Forensic entomologist Nick Polchak lives in a world of maggots and blow flies and decomposing bodies.  No wonder he's still single.

But Nick has finally found a woman as strange as he is - dog trainer Alena Savard, a woman who is odd, reclusive and can seemingly talk to animals.  It was a match made in heaven.

Nick and Alena are scheduled to be married on Saturday - but there's one small problem.  Nick has disappeared.

Caught up in a murder case involving an old friend, Nick finds himself on a manhunt that's drawing him farther and farther from the church where Alena is waiting.  But will he make it back in time?  Could Nick's single-minded focus cause him to forget his own wedding?  Is he really pursuing a killer, or is he running away from something else?

My Thoughts:

To be honest I didn't even plan on reading this book and I certainly didn't expect to like it.  I chose it as a novel that my husband could read and review for me.  It deals with bugs and dead bodies and yucky stuff that men like.  Unfortunately, if I waited for him to read and review it, I would be waiting until Christmas.  So, I decided I would just grin and bear it and wade through the yucky dead body stuff.

Imagine my surprise when I couldn't put this book down.  It was wonderful!  Yes, there were yucky dead body and bug stuff in there, but the characters were so real.  Nick was quirky and arrogant and rude...just like I would imagine a real-life genius bug guy would be.  Yet there is a personable side to him, a side that really does want to marry the girl and be with her forever.  Then there is Alena - a recluse who doesn't have friends, and who, secretly, has been planning her wedding since she was a little girl.

The author does an excellent job of keeping everything in character.  No one does anything that is ever out of sorts with their character, even down to how they describe things.  In one instance in the story, both Nick and Alena visit the same house at different times.  Nick notices its function and describes it one way while Alena notices its aesthetics and describes it completely different.  I thought that was brilliant on the part of the author.

And, as with all good mysteries, there is a twist at the end of the book.  I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this book and was pleasantly surprised by it.  Where has this series been that I haven't read it before?  I look forward to reading the previous and future Bug Man novels by Tim Downs.

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars.

This book was provided to me free of charge by Booksneeze.