The characters are vivid and their circumstances are penned with care and certainty, even if, in some cases, I would rather not be privy to those circumstances. The murders are violent and twisted and the back story is violent and twisted.
Although the book held my interest, my final thoughts are that the tendency to create more violent and graphic murders for serial killers becomes formulaic. D.S. McAvoy's personality and appearance set him apart, but strangely, he doesn't come across as clearly as some of the other characters.
The main plot is tied up by the end of the novel, but a subplot, a very important subplot for D.S. McAvoy, is a cliffhanger. I haven't read the first two novels in this series, but I don't really feel that this series suits me.
read in February; review scheduled for May
NetGalley/Penguin Group/Blue Rider Press
crime/police procedural. July 3, 2014. Print version: 352 pages.
Hmm. I was reading through old reviews I wrote pre-blogging days and in one I mentioned how the violence and grotesque murder scenes in fiction didn't bother me all that much and I had to laugh. My tolerance for that has definitely taken a nose dive over the years. Or maybe it just got to be too much too often. Either way, I don't especially like it anymore.
ReplyDeleteI gave up on a couple of favorite series because I got tired of how each book seemed to get more and more twisted and violent. It was like the authors felt they needed to out do themselves with each new book.
Anyway, it's too bad this one isn't better. You'd think the main character would be the most clear character given he's the main character.