Choosing a Book by its Cover...

It must be much more difficult to write in the horror/thriller genre than I imagined. I loved the "cover art" on this 1988 paperback edition of Peter Straub's "Koko". The mysterious title and cover image "felt" like the book would be about primative tribes, perhaps. The first pages revealed a Vietnam War theme; instantly you are able to see the face of the soldier in the cover design. From there, the story was disjointed, the characters one- or at best two- dimensional. No one I could care about, even the hero. The female characters were worse. What seemed to delineate "good" characters from "bad" was that all the good ones remembered and loved all the details of the Babar the Elephant stories. Segments of the plot were completely unresolved. Where was the editor? I try to finish any book I start. This one was a real drag.