Clean and Floss - Scott Rhine

Title: Clean and Floss
Author: Scott Rhine
Genre: Paranormal
Published: 2013
Formats: Paperback/Ebook

Available at:
Amazon
Amazon UK

Review:
“Clean and Floss” by Scott Rhine is a rather frantic, non-stop paranormal/urban fantasy adventure set in the same Universe as “Foundation for the Lost” which I previously reviewed here. For those of you who aren’t aware, “Foundation for the Lost” is one of my all-time favourite indie books so I really was looking forward to reading this.

The plot is based around Nick Solace, a main who deals in favours and utilises his skills to help clean up various paranormal messes that the government does not want revealed. However, when one of his cleaning tasks goes wrong and all hell breaks loose he realises that this time he is going to need some help. And so he finds himself pairing up with a young man called Vince who he previously helped out in the past and the two of them attempt to unravel the reasons for the chaos that has been unleashed.

As I implied in my initial paragraph, this is a fast paced, busy and at times rather frantic story that covers multiple events, characters and issues. This type of action-packed fast pacing seems to be typical of Rhine as the previous novels I have read by him tended to be similar. Therefore if you have read his previous novels you will know what to expect. However, I will say that with this novel I found that there was so much involved to the point that it could be a little bit overwhelming and distracting with so much being thrown at the reader.

In addition, there was an element of the plot in which Nick travels to England which felt like a different story to what I read before or after. It was as if Rhine had created a short story regarding Nick and just wanted to cram it into this overall novel via a minor link to the rest of the plot. I will state that I did find it to be an interesting plot line and it was probably one portion of the novel where the pace felt perfect and there was a decent core to follow but in my opinion it just didn’t fit with the overall flow of the novel.

It isn’t all negative however as I still found the story to be entertaining with a good mix of humour, horror and fun. The writing is also clever, descriptive and well executed with some great character lines that had me smiling and laughing throughout. In addition, the characters themselves were all well developed and interesting to follow. Nick specifically was really intriguing with an air of mystery surrounding him that had both the other character’s and my own curiosity piqued.

Overall this was an enjoyable novel despite some of my negative comments in regards to the volume of “things” that Rhine has included. If you are someone that likes vast arrays of layers in their stories and enjoys a fast paced, action packed plots then this novel should really appeal. Personally, I am still happy to recommend it for people looking for a fun paranormal/urban fantasy novel to read but would probably still promote some of Rhine’s other work first.