By Moristotle
Wednesday evening, UPS delivered to my doorstep a printed proof copy of edRogers’s new action & adventure thriller Finsoup. [edRogers is the pen name of Ed Rogers, a contributing editor of Moristotle & Co.] Of edRogers’ several such thrillers, it’s the first he wrote for the sake of a cause, one that, as the book’s “about the author” section conveys, “he became passionate about while living in Costa Rica for four years this decade – the urgent cause of ending shark finning.”
On the very first page of the book, which you see after turning the front-cover page, is a heart-breaking photograph of a hammerhead shark whose fins have been whacked off and thrown into the ocean, either already dead or destined to die of suffocation as it sinks to the bottom. The photo’s caption informs the reader that the shark is “one of over 73 million sharks killed every year for their fins.”
edRogers’ action & adventure novel thrillingly reveals why this abominable practice is going on. Finsoup is a tale of the real international corruption that threatens the existence of a large number of species of sharks. Charlie Blankenship has never heard of shark finning, but a chance meeting and a trip to Costa Rica change all that. His encounters with the Taiwanese mafia and a beautiful French environmentalist may lead to his death, but why expect anything else in Paradise?
And why kill sharks for their fins? Think about the book’s title for a few seconds….
For readers who might be moved by the plight of sharks, Finsoup is instructive, not only about the practice itself, but also about the reasons that make those practices possible, including corruption in various colluding government agencies.
And is it a good read, for an afternoon on the back porch, a day at the beach or in the mountains, an airplane trip for business or pleasure, your daily commute? One reader who was invited to read the manuscript told Ed the following:
But what was UPS doing at my doorstep? Well, Ed had charged me to check the proof copy out before he released it for publication (on the CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform). So I got busy and did my bit, checking every page number in the table of contents for accuracy, inspecting paragraphs for consistent justification, weighing whether the leading (vertical spacing between lines) was easy on the eye and facilitated reading, checking whether the four margin widths were pleasant on the eye, with text not crowding the binding or outer page edges.
The result of my inspection? A grade of A on all counts; Finsoup is a well-produced book, a pleasure to handle and read.
And the cover! One photograph wraps around the whole book, the picture of a live shark exhilarating in deep, rich blue water. A much lighter blue picked up from the shark’s body is used for the title & byline on the front, the spine, and the blurbs and list of edRogers’ other books on the back:
The lighter blue is legible and pleasant to the eye. I told Ed that, “except for the relatively small paperback size (6" x 9"), the book gives the impression of a biblio art object for coffee-table adornment. Barnes & Noble’s book buyers should salivate at the prospect of having a whole table devoted to displaying nothing but copies of Finsoup.” A grade of A+ here.
The prospect of such a display in Barnes & Noble stores frankly lights me up, and I’d willingly visit store managers toward trying to help that happen. But it will be a few weeks before Barnes & Noble buyers see the edition of Books in Print that lists Finsoup. So, if you’re willing to buy the book from Amazon instead, you can do that now. It went on sale there today. [You can see a list of all of edRogers’ books on sale from Amazon in the U.S. at this internet location.]
| Copyright © 2018 by Moristotle |
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