The Bridge of Deaths by M.C.V. Egan

Rating: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Obtained from: Crimson Flower Review Team

Read: August 28, 2012

On August 15th 1939, at the brink of World War II, an English plane crashed and sunk in Danish waters. Five deaths were reported: two Standard Oil of New Jersey employees, a German Corporate Lawyer, an English member of Parliament, and a crew member for the airline. Here is a conceivable version of the events.

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*** NOTE: It has come to my attention that The Bridge of Deaths has been re-published since the release of this review. I will not be returning to the piece, but encourage readers to understand the issues I noted may not apply to more recent editions of the novel.

The Bridge of Deaths by M.C.V. Egan presents a lot of challenges to me as a reviewer. I enjoyed the plot and greatly admire Egan's passion, but her style didn’t strike the right kind of chord in me. 

Please don't make assumptions from that comment, Egan is by no means a poor writer. I just don't feel she knew what kind of book she wanted to write when she penned this piece. Were she to have cut the fabricated characters/content and presented the story as a strict nonfiction of either her journey or her grandfather's, I would have issued a much higher rating. Similarly if she had cut down the amount of factual information, lost footnotes, concentrated on one particular plot line, and shown more than she told, I would have enjoyed it more as fiction.  

I feel Egan has talent and vision, but I am convinced her work would be easier to digest if she’d pick an angle and streamline her work along traditional genre lines. 

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"I am swimming. The water is salty and cold, and I am swimming, and I am scared. Someone else had to get out. Someone else has to get out..."

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