Tag: detective

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Review: The Whisper Man

Rating: 3.5 Stars

The Whisper Man by Alex North is a good thriller, but not as terrifying as everyone claims on the back cover. The story and the setting are chilling enough, and anything that involves children is always uncomfortable to read, but calling it thriller of the year is going a bit far.

After the death of his wife, Tom Kennedy is looking for a fresh start with his son, Jake. They move to Featherbank on Jake’s insistence, into a house considered scary by the local kids. Jake is a sensitive child who has difficulty making friends and his imaginary friends don’t help the situation either. In addition to this, Tom finds it hard to communicate with Jake.

The village looks sleepy and safe, but twenty years ago it was the scene of horrific serial killings. The killer dubbed as The Whisper Man abducted and killed five little boys before he was caught and sentenced to life imprisonment. This isn’t a cause of concern for Jake and Tom since it was all a long time back. But just before they move, another boy goes missing, and the police find startling similarities with the old case.

Then Jake starts acting weirdly, and claims that he hears whispers at his window. Tom is concerned about the mental health of his son. There are also other suspicious things happening around him making him rethink about moving to this sleepy little village.

The Whisper Man is a good thriller that also has a heart. The struggles of a father to understand his son, and of a man to overcome the loss of his wife are beautifully penned, and create real sympathy for both Tom and Jake. There is also the character of Pete who is a very lonely man, living in his past. It is easy to feel bad for this police detective too.

The only things I found lacking in this book were unpredictability and a feeling of fear and dread which generally comes with the way an author writes about the uncomfortable things. It sounds quite macabre, but it is hard for readers to feel actual fear unless they see the extent of a killer’s depravity. After reading Nordic crime fiction, it feels like British authors are a bit squeamish going into gory details. But reading a book is like watching a movie in your mind; you want a clear picture that you can understand. Some books need to be more graphic because of their plotlines.

Still, The Whisper Man manages to keep the reader interested. A good one-time read.

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Review: Troubled Blood (Strike And Robin #5)

Rating: 4 Stars

This book confused the hell out of me! So many characters, so much information, and Strike and Robin going round in circles! I had to go back and forth to keep everything straight, which, with a book this size, is sheer madness!

But oh the mystery, and the action! Robert Galbraith is like P.D James in my opinion. The descriptions are long, the characters have a habit of sprouting rubbish meant to be deep and profound, and important things get lost in the meandrings of the author’s mind. Yet, the story is so powerful that you don’t want to give up.

I would like to make it clear that I couldn’t care less what the writer is like in real life. If I started caring about authors and their real life problems, I’d have no books to read! I like reviewing books, not the personal lives of other human beings.

Troubled Blood starts off with Strike back in Cornwall to see his sick aunt. He meets a woman who wants to hire him to find out what happened to her mother who vanished 40 years ago. Strike and Robin agree to take the case. They set a limit of a year to get a breakthrough or give up. There are a few other cases, and both Strike and Robin are going through their own personal struggles, like always. On top of this, the initial investigations in the missing woman case are a mess.

The police detective originally investigating the crime was having a mental breakdown, and his notes reflect that deterioration of mind. But of course, all this happens after you have read so many pages that you might as well have read a whole book!

It is always fun to go on an adventure with Strike and Robin, but it is becoming harder with every new book. Galbraith needs to tighten the writing or no one is going to read these never-ending stories! I feel that a lot of focus is lost because of so many other cases on the side. A detective agency can take on multiple cases at one time, but it is not necessary to go into the details of each and every one of them.

Then there is the personal angle that bothers me so much! I have said it before, and I say it again, there is no need for Strike and Robin to be involved romantically. Their personal lives are like train wrecks, you can only feel sorry for them. It is one of the things that I dislike the most about this series.

Troubled Blood is a really good book, but I hesitate in recommending it. Because it is too long and confusing, only real fans of Strike and Robin can truly enjoy this one.

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Review: Lethal White

Rating: 3.5 Stars

I think it was a mistake to read this book right after reading Career Of Evil. For one, I kept wanting to read one more page till I realized that I had spent all night reading it, and for another, it was not because of the mystery but because I just wanted it to be over!

First, let’s talk about the thing everyone was waiting for: Robin and Matthew’s wedding, and what happened after Strike managed to reach the church in Career Of Evil. The whole sequence at the beginning of Lethal White left me underwhelmed and disappointed. I expected Robin’s character to grow more mature as we find out more and more about her. The first chapter again made me question how the same woman can be so brave, yet so weak? Then, suddenly we skip a whole year and realize that everything seems to be back at square one, except the agency is doing a tad bit better than in the last book.

The first chapter could have been redeemed if the actual mystery had been anything like the previous three installments. In the previous review, I talked about Robert Galbraith not being one to shy away from violence and gore. Looks like I talked to soon.

The story is not bad, and there is a definite mystery to be solved, but this detective series has suddenly become like an Agatha Christie book, only with long and tedious details that make you want to yawn. The fact that I was able to actually work it all out much sooner than the detectives themselves, was a downer. I just read on to see if my guess was correct.

It all looked really promising in the beginning with a mysterious visitor, and his strange story. I was ready to read something along the lines of The Silkworm. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. I’m still a big fan of murder mysteries, so I won’t say that it was a bad book, just that compared to the earlier books, this was a bit of a letdown. I have really begun to think that Galbraith needs a better editor who has the skills to make the whole plot tighter, and stop it from meandering around too much.

As for the Cormoran-Robin-Matthew relationship, it looks like we will keep going round and round in circles for a while yet. If characters from the past keep turning up at every corner, we can look forward to this whole thing being stretched on for another few books. At least this time the reader wasn’t left hanging with a strange ending!

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Review: Career Of Evil

Rating: 4 Stars

First of all, I don’t know why I didn’t read this book earlier, considering I have had this one since it came out in 2015. My excuse is that I made the mistake of reading reviews which said that it ended on a cliffhanger, and that it would be years before the next one came out. So, me being me, thought that I’d wait till the next one is released before tackling such a huge tome. Big mistake. If reading one thick book is daunting, committing to reading two, that too back to back, seems like a herculean task!

Fortunately, I was able to push myself to finish this one in a little more than 2 days, and now after really thinking about it, I’m ready to write a review.

Contrary to popular opinion, I actually liked this book. Yes, it’s slow, and yes, it leaves off at a strange turn, but these are not reason enough to not read it. When it comes to detective stories, I can be really patient. One of my most favorite detective series, written by P.D James, consists of huge books, with long, long narratives, describing things to death.

Career of Evil takes its own sweet time to come to the point, but the mystery is interesting, and Robert Galbraith never shies away from giving gory details of seemingly unimaginable cruelty. There are so many suspects, each with a plausible motive, which combined with Cormoran Strike’s own prejudices, makes for an interesting read. There is such a feeling of danger lurking around every corner that you keep expecting things to go wrong all the time. Which, of course, they do. With Robin Ellacott around to stir things up, it is but expected that things will become interesting.

One of the reasons for the heft of this book is that it has a parallel thread running through it. That of Robin’s back story. When I had read The Silkworm, I was really irritated with Robin, for it seemed like the woman who was not afraid to face danger head on, was a coward and a loser in her personal life. These two seemingly opposite traits made her an annoying character for me. This book tries to somewhat redress the balance in Robin’s favour.

It has been clear from the beginning that no one in Robin’s family takes her ambition to become a detective very seriously. It is therefore natural for them to be against her taking a very low paying job which comes with its own perils and dangers. She has stood up to these pressures till now, and continued to excel in her job. What is it then, that makes it impossible for her to stand up for herself in her personal life? What seemed like a contradiction, becomes clear in this book and you are better able to understand Robin’s behaviour.

Still, Strike and Robin come across as so clueless and stupid in some instances, that I wanted to club them on their heads with something. As far as the “cliffhanger” is concerned, Galbraith has done it before as well, though this time the exact point where the book left off was very irritating. Even then, the slow burn of the story and all the blood and gore are so typical Galbraith that even though I don’t love this book as much as The Silkworm, I still consider it pretty decent in this series and particularly in this genre.

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Review: The Good Girl

Rating: 3 Stars

I had been thinking about reading The Good Girl by Mary Kubica for a long time. It seemed to be a favourite on Instagram. I was a bit disappointed with it though. First off, there were comparisons to Gone Girl, which is never a good thing. A book should be original and not remind you of any other books. Then, as I read it, I realized that there was nothing in the book (except the “Girl” in its title) to make it seem even remotely like Gone Girl.

The book is told in alternate voices, flipping back and forth in time. One of my most favourite things in a book is to have more than one perspectives of the story. This book, however, failed to catch my interest from the beginning. The start is quite slow, and it takes a long time to come to the point. I was halfway through before I got a bit interested in the story. By that time, I was only interested in knowing what had actually happened and whether my guesses were correct or not.

The love angles in the book seem forced, and if there was ever a case of the Stockholm Syndrome, it is in this book. The character of Mia Dennett is like that of a typical Mills & Boon heroine, perfect and flawless but not valued by her own family. She is the essential poor, little, rich girl who shuns her father’s wealth to live hand-to-mouth while teaching the underpriveleged. The constant refrain of how her own father doesn’t love her becomes too much after a while.

Of course, Mia’s father is shown to be utterly heartless while her mother is utterly helpless. There are too many cliches here to count. Detective Gabe Hoffman works in a strange police department, where he has to tackle only one case at a time, and even when he has other cases, it still leaves him enough time to not only visit Mrs. Dennett, but also keep an eye on Ms. Thatcher regularly!

I would have overlooked all of this if the book had been marketed as anything other than a thriller and a worthy successor to Gone Girl. It is a drama at best, and the only part that might make it a borderline thriller is probably that last chapter.

The Epilogue is definitely something I was not expecting, though it makes me question the palusibility of the whole story, particularly the mental stability of the main character. An average read if you go in without expectations, and keeping in mind the usual books published under this particular publishing house.

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Review: The Bat

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Sometimes, I’m too arrogant for my own good. Everyone told me not to start reading the Harry Hole books from the first book, because it will be boring for me. I refused to listen to them, because I’m arrogant like I mentioned above, and also because I’m a bit crazy, and not reading something from the beginning is anathema to me. Well, it took me 18 days, and I read three other books while reading it, but I finally managed to finish The Bat by Jo Nesbo. I’m so glad I decided to stick to it and not give up.

I wanted to say that the book starts off slow, but it doesn’t. I have read books with a much slower pace. It’s the story that seems so boring and fails to capture your interest in the first 100 pages of the book. I was ready to give up. There were days when I just looked at the book and didn’t want to read anything at all! I was just too stubborn to give up and have people tell me they told me so.

The book picked up speed, and my interest, after about 130 pages. Before that, the only reason I insisted on reading on, was that I had started liking the Norwegian detective, who seemed a bit unhinged. I have found a new favourite contemporary detective after Cormoran Strike! Harry Hole (pronounced Hoo-Leh) is a bit mental, thinks too much and is an alcoholic. He has a very complicated backstory, but that was perhaps the least confusing of all the stories in the book.

I can see why people think that The Bat is not the best book to introduce Harry Hole. The story itself is very cliched. A Norwegian girl is raped and murdered, and the police is trying to find the murderer. Harry’s government has sent him to help in the investigation and tie up any lose ends. If it had been a normal whodunnit, it would have been easier to read, but it is not your average crime thriller with a swashbuckling hero.

Every character in this book has a story to tell, and these stories range from stories of their life, to stories of their parents’ lives, to stories of Aboriginal legends. It becomes too much to sort through the relevance of each story to what is happening in the book. However, this was the reason I decided to stick with the book. It was interesting to relate all the stories to what was going on in the book, and it gave my mind some much needed exercise! I had my suspicions but, like Harry, I couldn’t be sure.

There was also this feeling of affront because all the female characters were only good for one thing, and that was not bartending. Then I remembered that this was written in the late 90s when macho detectives did everything themselves, and poor females were either the victims, or extremely grateful to said detectives. Still, it was good to read about a hero who has little to recommend him, is an alcoholic, and is guilty of a lot more than what his superiors are willing to admit. I just hope there are better female characters in the other books in this series.

In the end, I was glad that I had stuck by this book. It gave me an introdution to a well-loved character, who I am beginning to like. Next time however, I will take others’ advice and read the third book instead of the second one, if only to keep my sanity and to keep my reading progress on track.

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