fool me twice

there are four books on my bedside table. actually, they're stacked in bed with me, but that's just a testament to the cluttered nature of my bedside table. two are awful chick lit books; it's summertime, i felt the urge to read something other than mclaren (still haven't finished it, it's so boring) and 'what's the matter with kansas?' so when you're avoiding politics and religion, you go with...chick lit.

mistake! the opening 10 pages made me yawn in each of them so i started reading this fun little book by tim downs. his quirky forensic entomologist sleuth was the perfect companion for the weekend and i also learned more than i ever needed about maggots and blowflies. but somewhere in the middle of the book i had a mormon/jane austen moment: is this...? could this be a christian mystery?

no, i said to myself. no one went to church, no one prayed and no one made any attempts to witness to anyone. no one refused glasses of wine, no one refrained from kissing the girl and no one made any reference to the rapture, jesus or the holy spirit. what made this thought pop into my head?

so i shrugged to myself and kept reading. when i finished it, i liked it so much, i even went on amazon to see if his third had been published. and this is what i found:

'He laudably knows how to show rather than tell—a rarity for Christian fiction.
[snip] ... thought provoking instead of preachy. Downs's flair for the
unusual—and his notable improvement over his already strong first effort—make
him a writer to watch in the faith fiction market.'

it's like i have a sixth sense about these things...