It is also straightforward about the characters and their motivations. This is not an author who believes in 'show don't tell'. Here is his protagonist's self-assessment of her character: "For all my outward display of confidence, I'm riddled with doubt. There are hundreds of insecurities behind my smile. It's almost as if I've got two different personalities." (Ch 3)
At the start, it seemed to be a thriller about vigilante justice but the hero of this section, Katrina, disappears when the book morphed into a police procedural murder mystery. She bounces back in at the end as a sort of deus ex machina to solve the plot.
I say 'police procedural' but the police seemed to honour the procedure more in the breach than in the observance. The lead detective uses a civilian as an agent provocateur and conspires to cover up a murder. He also makes a verbal slip which suggests he knows the identity of the main murderer so perhaps he is corrupt as well as indifferent to the rules.
The portrayal of misogyny within the CID as evidenced, inter alia, by puerile penis-jokes was probably accurate. Unfortunately, the sexism spilled over into the rest of the book. The attitudes to women in display through most of this novel were old-fashioned to say the least. The wife of the chief copper is a nagging shrew with a sporadic Scottish accent. Other women are victims or sex-workers. There was a focus on their looks: they were either drop-dead gorgeous or grotesque. Katrina, whose physical assets were repeatedly extolled, has her degree and post-graduate study dismissed as "basic qualifications". I found this problematic, especially when the principal crimes involved sex-based violence towards women.
There is an interesting moment of meta-fiction (or was it a commercial break?) when the author appears as a character.
There is an audacious twist at the end.
March 2024; 282 pages
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