Week 58: Dead Man Running by Ross Coulthart and Duncan McNab

The subtitle of this book... An insider's story on one of the world's most feared outlaw motorcycle gangs... intrigued me. I kept reading because of that tag line. But it wasn't enough for me to finish this book.

I've had two failures with this blog so far, and this is the second one.

Here's why.

1. I can handle most dialects, but the Australian dialect in which this book was written was really difficult for me. I'm not sure why, but the plot of the book was harder to follow because of it.
2. The style of the writing was frustratingly informal. The authors seemed to almost be dictating the story from a conglomeration of police reports and testimony and interspersing their own narratives, but it was not done well. (Want an example of a book in which this was done well? Try any of the true-to-life books by John Grisham.)
3. The momentum of this book was like driving stick in a Suzuki Sidekick with a rotten clutch and a fussy brake pedal. It was fast, slow, dull, and then gruesome. It did not keep my attention.
4. I really had to work to remember the multitude of names and pseudonyms that were used by the Bandidos and their competitive motorcycle gangs. It was so confusing after a while that it became the reason I decided to give up this book in the first place.

I am kind of bummed out that I got 185 pages and six days into it and finally had to dump it. I was reading, but nothing was sticking. I've only got about 3,500 books I can read until the end of my short life, I'm not going to lose any sleep over a dud like this.

Thank goodness I didn't buy it.