39%
21.09.26The only thing I liked about this book were the local references. Otherwise, what I said about previous books in the series (Cromer and Fakenham) remains true - too many pointless characters, too much pointless exposition and relentlessly boring writing stops the story in its tracks (ha!).
56%
24.05.26The pacing is poor, there's too much exposition, the fact checking is still dodgy (has the author ever actually listened to a podcast?), the characters are underdeveloped but still I keep reading this series so there must be something about it that engages me. Maybe I just hope that this time it will be better.
43%
26.05.26This was... exuberant, with strong sense of place (Manchester) and time (the 1980s), although the pop culture references were rather shoehorned in. And that was the problem - a better edit would have sorted the awkwardness, poor pacing and repetition. In particular, characters rolled their eyes on almost every page, which must be as tiring for them as it is for the reader.
14.12.25
A stilted translation, one-dimensional characters who were hard to tell apart, poor pacing, a plot that made no sense, and being told everything instead of being shown it - the much-celebrated (and rather monotonous) descriptions of snow were not enough to save this weak novel.
17.09.25
I'm not much of a Greenwood fan but how could I resist a story set in my oft-ignored home town? Unfortunately, the town didn't feature at all and so the very occasional mention of local businesses - plus the use of the actual names of many racecourse staff - were the only high points in this poorly written and deadly boring (ha!) police procedural, where there were more police officers than suspects.
19.07.25
At first, the poor grammar made this really hard to follow, and then the confusing time-shifting plot and inconsistently drawn characters made it even harder. I still don't understand whodunnit or whytheydunnit or how someone who hadn't dunnit ended up in prison too. Nice cover, though.
31.05.25
This didn't contain the irritating factual errors of the first book (or at least not that I noticed), but it was frustrating in a different way. It wasn't emotionally involving, and the murderer was obvious as soon as I gave some thought to whodunnit. Mainly, though, it could have done so much more with the series' whole USP, the AI detective.
53%
16.05.25I enjoyed the first in this series but this third book feels much more off the production line. Maslen takes pains to make the main detective realistically ordinary, but that only draws attention to the unrealistically evil villains (and there are several) without bothering to build any emotional engagement. The murderer here was obvious from the start, so it seemed like a lot of faffing went on before they were finally taken down.
Disappointingly, after a strong opening to the series, this was confusing, impossible to work out the murderer and, surprisingly, not particularly well written. And it's lucky that nobody ever finds out the main character's coincidental links with the cases.
(I often wonder, with police procedurals, how people know what to call the investigator: "Oh, Acting Detective Superintendent Officer, do have a cup of tea.")
14.07.24
I met Andy a couple of times when he was a highly paid and highly visible copywriter teaching others how to be as rich and famous as him. Then he decided to be even richer and famouser as an author and, of course, his boundless confidence paid off. And, perhaps not surprisingly given his background, it was really rather good - well written, well paced and with reasonably strong characters. It still plodded (ha!) at times as police procedurals do, but it was skilfully executed.
