Now I'm Angry: Terence Lee's Time Camera

[Note: anyone who finds this post blogworthy should feel free to quote all or part of it on their own sites. I'm posting it in part to draw attention to the problem of people manipulating the Amazon review system.]

Terence Lee, the author of Time Camera, left a comment the other day at book-blog.com in response to a review I wrote of his book. I found the comment offensive. Here it is:

I am the author of Time Camera, which has been rated by the Arizona Daily Star along with the Da Vinci Code as one of the 6 must reads for 2006. What Debra hamel has not posted here, but which she has posted alongside this negative review on Amazon, is a plug for her new book. Cynical? you decide. Nice one Debra

And this was my response:

Actually it's a plug for an old book, which I append to every review I post at Amazon. Why? Because Amazon allows reviewers to do it, and I'm giving them loads and loads of free content (200 plus reviews so far) and may as well take advantage of it. More importantly, Amazon reviews are very frequently reposted on other sites, somehow automatically scraped from Amazon, in a process that strips the review of information about the review's author. It is therefore advisable for reviewers to add signatures to their reviews, so that they will retain some reference to authorship when stripped.

Meanwhile, if a negative-but-polite review of your book prompts you to go on the offensive like this, I really think you should develop thicker skin.

I'll repost the review to which Mr. Lee objected below so you don't have to follow a link to read it.

Now, today, on a hunch, I went to see my review of Time Camera in situ at Amazon.com. It's missing. Hmmmm, I think. Might Mr. Lee have been so put off by an honest review of his book that he asked the Amazon people to remove it? I suspect he was, and that he did. And I will very soon go about getting the review reinstated there, after I finish this note. But first I want to discuss the other reviews of Mr. Lee's book at Amazon. There are ten of them. All of these reviewers hav given Time Camera a five-star rating--the highest possible. I only gave him two stars.

These are the people who have reviewed Mr. Lee's book. In parentheses I note how many books they have reviewed in total at Amazon. (You find this out by clicking on "See all my reviews" after a reviewer's name.)

"Amazon Reader" (1 review written)
Daphne Wilding (1 review written)
Rob Foote (1 review written)
Timothy Roy  (1 review written)
Maxwell Raymond (1 review written)
Tom Orly (1 review written)
Frank LaSalle (1 review written)
Brook Lockyer (1 review written)
Judy Blair (1 review written)
Harriet Klausner (more reviews than you can count written: she's Amazon's number one reviewer, and is famous for never writing negative reviews of books)

So here's the question: are these people who've written five-star reviews of Mr. Lee's book legitimate reviewers, or are they friends doing him a favor? One wonders, given (1) the fact that all but one of the reviewers have no previous reviewing history at Amazon, (2) the mysterious absence of my two-star review and (3) Mr. Lee's childish attack on me because of that review. You be the judge.

I would have taken the high road on this and not brought these suspicious reviews to anyone's attention had my review been in place at Amazon when I checked just now. As it is, well.... Here's my review of Time Camera:

The Review:

Trafford Publishing © 2005, 315 pages [amazon]

The idea behind Terence Lee's Time Camera is a clever one: the protagonist, 38-year-old Zak Endicott, invents a camera that is somehow able to slice through the fabric of time and film silent movies of past events. Initially the camera's range is limited to minus 300 years, but ultimately Zak can record anything that's happened in the last 2500 years, provided he has access to the location of the event in the present. The appeal of such a device is plain. The great moments and mysteries of the past are laid bare to the camera's operator--the identity of Jack the Ripper, the assassination of JFK, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The problem is that Zak also has the potential to uncover secrets with his camera that living people would prefer to leave buried. He could catch cheating spouses in flagrante, for example, solve innumerable unsolved crimes, uncover governmental conspiracies. All of which means that an awful lot of people would like to see Zak and his ingenious camera disappeared.

A camera that can film the Spartans at Thermopylae I accept, but no one would agree to upend their life as readily as Lucy does here.The setup of the book, then, is promising, high-tech gadgetry and the hero propelled at once into an inherently dangerous situation. The author throws in a love interest--Zak's agent cum girlfriend Lucy--and a potential rival for Lucy's affection, the military assassin type, Eric, who is assigned to stick with the couple once the U.S. government gets involved. The plot involves historical and modern-day conspiracies, terrorism, the occasional murder; and Zak's use of the camera allows the author to pepper the narrative with potentially interesting historical vignettes.

The problem is that, rife with possibility though the story idea is, the book never becomes more than an interesting intellectual exercise. It fails for two reasons that one is wont to read about in books about writing: (1) The author does not make his characters three-dimensional, and thus does not make us care about them. (2) Despite that the situation described in the book is a dangerous one, the author does not put his characters in peril. Indeed, time and again he passes up the opportunity to heighten the tension in a scene--Lucy's time alone in the apartment of a bad guy, say, or the denouement, in which the heroes are tracking a terrorist in a dark, confined space when a bomb is set to blow within the hour. Added to these major flaws is a substantial problem with credibility. We are to believe that within a few hours of meeting Zak Lucy agrees to give up her successful career as a literary agent, move in with Zak, and travel the world with him filming historical events so as to market them to television. A camera that can film the Spartans at Thermopylae I accept, but no one would agree to upend their life as readily as Lucy does here.

Time Camera has a lot going for it: the idea is good, the writing passes muster, and it is certainly well researched. It just needs to be infused with flesh and blood a healthy dose of suspense.

Tags: book reviews, books

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