Review Summaries

• Readers value the brisk investigation and urban crime setting, while series followers also appreciate the interplay between recurring characters.

Reviews

• A Good Enough Read to Make Me Read More in This Series

  I found this to be a very good read and a much, much better book than #2 in the series "Death on a Number 8 Hook". I am not really a big fan of the multiple POV style of writing where each chapter switches back and forth between different characters but in this case there aren't so many characters that it becomes difficult to keep track. And characters we sure have both good and bad and likeable or not! Gary Silk is surely one of the 'baddest' and most unlikeable characters I've run across in a good many crime novels and for one of the bad guys I actually had a bit of a liking for Frank. Now it's great to see the way Willows and Parker's characters are developing. They are really becoming a good detective team and their banter in some cases is actually quite funny. In fact I had many smiles and giggles while reading this book and even a few real LOLs! I'm glad Lt Bradley still has his nice view and I like the way his department works together. Sort of reminds me of Ed McBain's 57th Precinct bunch. The Vancouver setting plays a big role in this story and the ending turns out to be quite spectacular with all the bad guys taken care of in an appropriate way. In all 3 books that I've read in this series it seems like one or more of the subplots never get concluded solidly and appear to be a lead in to the next book but so far that hasn't happened. This book really doesn't have any unique subplots as everything is part of the one main story but even then the Al Paterson storyline never had a solid wind up. This book fits in my mini-project of reading finalists and winners of Arthur Ellis awards as does the next in the series, "Serious Crimes", and it has been a good enough read to make me read some more in this series as long as I can find them as eBooks.

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