The Nature of Things

I have very few rules about what I WON'T read.  I won't read novels about vampire lovers. I won't read books with pictures of over-endowed and half-dressed pouty women (or men, for that matter) on the dust cover. I won't read books that glorify sadism or sadists.  I won't read books about Hitler.  And I won't read mystery or crime books in which children or animals are the victims. Other than that, most anything goes. Why, then, did I wind up reading this book in which a five-year-old child is the victim? Well, that's easy enough. It was this month's selection of my local book club.  In the last couple of years as a member of this club, I've been introduced to several writers that I had never read before. I've liked a few of them (Tom Franklin, Harlan Coben, e.g.), a lot of them I found to be mediocre, and a few I've actively disliked. This one, I think, falls in the  meh  category.  I found the writing rather simplistic, as if it were writte...