Well, that was painfully mediocre, wasn't it? Plus, its connection to LOST is tenous at best - there are references to Widmore and Hanso and Paik (that's Sun's father's company, in case you can't remember) but little else. It does however go into many of the same themes that the TV series does, such as purgatory, light/dark, humanity, et cetera, and when it does, that's when it's at its best. And it's almost worth it to read the letter from Gary's Australian publisher. Walkabout Publishing! Nice!

Beyond that, with its shoddy fake noir writing, flat characters, and tin-eared dialogue, perhaps this manuscript was better off being chucked into the fire like Jack did on the island. LOST was an incredibly nuanced program with many facets that would be worth exploring in any tie-in literature. Too bad that none of it ever rises to the occasion. ( )

So overall, I thought this book was really fun. I am a huge fan of the show Lost and this book is supposed to be the lost manuscript that Sawyer ends up reading. There are some really fun Lost Easter Eggs sprinkled throughout the text, which was really entertaining. I really love that they weren't forced either. The seamless inserts just worked and I really appreciated that. I also love that my home town was mentioned, which does not happen very often so that was a pleasant surprise! The story itself was very much your classic noir/mystery, but it did keep me guessing for some of it. I lost a little bit of interest in the middle of the story and I felt that the character of Pru was added just a little bit too late in the story, but this was a fun and entertaining read. If there wasn't the connection to Lost, I might not have picked it up, but if you have ever watched the show, I recommend it. ( )

This was my second time reading through this one and I think it's a perfectly fun, serviceable mystery. I'm not sure why so many reviewers seem to find so much fault with it.

Of course, part of that might be that they misunderstood the purpose of the book. It was never meant to reveal secret knowledge about anything going on in Lost. It was merely meant to be the manuscript that Sawyer finds amongst the wreckage (the author, Gary Troup, having been sucked into the plane's engine in the first episode) and reads until Jack tosses the whole thing in the fire. Of course, I also understand that it is supposed to have some connection to the Lost ARG, but I didn't really follow that. I just thought it was a cool idea to release the final manuscript by Oceanic 815 passenger Gary Troup as part of the Lost experience.

This is a fun read, and it's peppered with names from Lost and the Lost ARG, but it's clear that names like Widmore were just used by Troup as a popular rich, business family name (like a writer in our world might use Vanderbilt), because the Widmores in the world of Lost are of UK origin, not US. Perhaps Troup based his Widmores on some American branch of the same family, perhaps not, but that's going beyond the purpose of the story.

Also, if you look at the events of the novel in a more allegorical sense, there's actually quite a bit revealed for what came after this book was originally released. Especially on the nature of good and evil. It's possible, and this is just my theory of course, that Jacob had a small, but significant guiding hand in Troup's writing of Bad Twin. I mean, he was brought to the island, even if he didn't last that long. ( )

A LOST book club read: Simple and predictable but surprisingly pleasant considering that I went into it with the lowest of expectations. ( )

"Denial was a powerful thing, and it was hard even to imagine the difficulty and pain of acknowledging that one's own twin, one's own genetic double, had murder on his mind."

When I first saw the cover for this book, my first thought was that we were finally going to get the goods on Jacob and The Man in Black. The story is about a pair of twins, just not those twins. Islands are involved, just not The Island. In fact, it's a story that has absolutely not one thing to do with the plot or characters of the LOST tv show. There are few shout-outs to the fans: a mention of Oceanic Airlines, a few Widmores in the cast of characters, but nothing of substance. So if you're halfway through the series and are worried about learning something vital or getting ahead of the timeline by reading this book.... relax. It's completely standalone.

Now that we have that out of the way, why should a LOST fan read it? Why should anyone spend a few hours invested in it? Because it's a pretty entertaining mystery! It has a classic sensibility to it, like The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep. Not that it has the dialogue or the language of a hardboiled novel, don't get that impression, but it has that same feeling. A struggling P.I., an elusive case, a femme fatale and plenty of bodies.

As a LOST fan it left me disappointed. As a mystery reader, I really enjoyed it. ( )