by Val McDermid
Rating: ***
Bit of a love/hate relationship with this book. I could rate some parts 2* and others 5*. I struggled to get into it at first and found some of the writing a bit dense and over-wordy. I have read a lot of detective/thriller/murder books over the last couple of years so maybe I am getting a little jaded, although I have not read McDermid before.
I could not quite connect to the character of Tony Hill which was a problem and one of the characters I took quite a dislike to, which skewed some of my early reading. However, the main plot has so many twists and turns, I did end up grabbing the book in a quiet five minutes to keep on reading and parts of the narrative I was galloping through in great anticipation. There is a side plot which, although well done, I didn't see the point of - I would have much rather the focus continued on the main murder. It ended rather abruptly and unsatisfactorily, for me. It appears that this story might run further and frankly, I'd had enough - I wanted to see the culprit well and truly dealt with but that does not quite happen and I felt the end was weak and rushed. However, you can certainly get into it and it's a good twisting tale of hunter and hunted to keep you absorbed.
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