"By Reason of Insanity"

By Reason of Insanity (Randy Singer)

Boy, this is tough. This is another free Kindle book, and this one I actually finished, although I kind of wish I hadn't.

Let's start with two minor issues: One, our dashing hero is kind of a douchebag (he sees the female lead and wants to help her because she's "an attractive woman at the mercy of the system" - if you're a man or he doesn't find you attractive, well, fuck off). Also, he has dumb facial hair.
Two, there's several boring pages where our author is playing high stakes poker, which is even more boring to read about than I assume it is fun to actually play.

With that out of the way, here's the real big roblem with this book: It's fucking dumb. The writing itself is OK, but the plotline itself is stupid in a I-can't-believe-I-just-read-that kind of moronic. About halfway through the book, a professional, court-expert psychologist is brought in to examine a person under suspicion of being a serial killer who is reporting hearing voices and having visions. This person is suspected of possibly having DID, commonly known as multiple personality disorder. Try and guess what this psychologist does.

1.) Ask for a series of interviews to attempt to diagnose this person.
2.) Guess that these visions are real and supernatural, because Belshazzar had a vision before Babylon was sacked by the Persians in the Old Testament.

Spoiler alert: It's number two. I think you can guess what the problem with this book is now. As it turns out, the female lead is psychic and is having visions from God. Really. Everything else in the book is totally straight and scientific - except that at the age of 25, this reporter suddenly develops psychic powers that give her visions. This opens a whole can of worms (Why does this just happen now? Is Jesus giving her these visions? If so, why? If he can give her these visions, why doesn't he just stop what he's sending her the vision about?) that the author never examines, because, ummmm, (indistinct mumbling). It's bad. No, not even bad; It's fucking terrible. It's kind of sad, too, the author really isn't a bad writer, it's just the plot with these beyond moronic super powers is a waste of time for everyone involved; You might as well as have it all be a dream for how plausible any of it is. The author is, as I found out after reading this, apparently considered "The Christian John Grisham", but a more accurate title might be "The Shitty John Grisham Who Writes Bad Books".
Also, the icing on the cake - the female lead, who's in jail for 70% of the book, has one of those "Hi, nice to meet you, now we're in love" romances with her lawyer, the dumb-bearded douchebag up above. Blech.

Grade: F-