Publishers Weekly needs better reviewers

Warning: Plot spoilers to Tim Green’s Exact Revenge follow; also for A Separate Peace, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Sixth Sense.

This is a running theme, and I’ll come back to it whenever I see a particularly egregious example. Today I saw one.

Note to reviewers: If you give away huge chunks of the book of movie’s plot in your review, you are an asshole. That’s what you do in fifth grade when you have to write a book report, not when you’re a professional.

Here is Publishers Weekly’s write up of the aforementioned Exact Revenge:

The world is Raymond White’s oyster: a working-class boy from Syracuse who made good, he’s got a Princeton degree, rugged good looks and the gorgeous girlfriend to match, and partner status at a law firm by age 25. But in this lively modern-day retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo, just as White is poised to run for Congress, he is framed for murder, convicted and thrown into solitary confinement. After almost two decades of hard time, White is befriended by a fellow prisoner, lifer, “thief and part-time murderer,” Lester Cole. “Exact revenge…. If you don’t do it, you’ll be a professional victim. You exact it and it’s exact. Not just a reaction, but planned out. Precise. It needs to send a message,” Cole advises, beginning his tutelage about life, literature and the location of a billion dollars worth of loot that they’ll split after they escape. Cole dies in the breakout through the sewers of the Big House, but White goes on to retrieve the money and put in motion his reprisal plan against the former colleagues who framed him for murder. White takes down his enemies one by one in a fun, fast-paced update on the Dumas formula that will have readers booing the bad guys and rooting for the wronged hero.

ARGH! What the hell is wrong with those people? Look at the enormous amount of plot they give away!

I don’t need to read about Raymond White’s run for Congress, because I know he’ll be framed for murder. I know he’ll be convicted. I know his friend will die during their escape. I know he’ll win in the end.

All those surprises are ruined for me by the idiots at Publishers Weekly. New flash: Some of us actually read books for the stories. Some of us don’t want to know that Phineas dies at the end, or that Darth Vader is Luke’s father, or that Bruce Willis is really dead all along.

ARGH!