A great debut novel, the author should be pleased with the result 3.5/5. A detective story centred on the partnership of detectives Gemma Woodstock and Fleet. These characters are distinct and deeply flawed, they work really well together in a believable way. There are a few murders, they get investigated by these two characters as well as the team in the Melbourne office, the other detectives acting as background characters.
Written in the first person perspective of Gemma Woodstock throughout, you really get a feel of how she lives her life. This is gritty stuff, she has a fair amount of self loathing. Her disjointed relationship with her distant young son is mainly sustained by phone calls, she loves him but can’t consolidate this with her life as a detective in a far away city. She has her vices, booze and cigarettes, her sex life is a series of one night stands with poor quality men, while beginning a relationship with a decent chap, who hasn’t seen friends make that same mistake. At work her strengths are her analytical mind and organisational skills. She doesn’t have a lot of emotional strength and disappointingly breaks down and cries in a few too many situations where you would expect a police officer to have a more resilience, but she does recognise this flaw and question if she is cut out for this line of work, but this is a stereotype too often applied to women.
If you’re a feminist then don’t expect much from the way the issues of abuse, discrimination and general sexism are dealt with by the characters. This must reflect the author’s research on the attitudes within the environment of the characters, institutional sexism in Police departments in particular is believable.
The first person perspective really involves you in the plot, keenly turning the pages. You can guess who did it if you want but it’s only a 40% probability guess. There are enough twists and turns to keep you guessing up until the end. This book was 4/5 possibly going on 5/5 until the last 30 pages, it was too quick to deal with the many loose ends. The final scene wasn’t believable enough either, you’ll slap the book saying why didn’t they do this, they are trained police officers aren’t they? A lot of the answers you demand are given in the summary in the epilogue, some of these should definitely have been covered in the action ahead of this. But apart from that it concludes well, draws the many lose ends together really well, just not in the way that could have elevated this book to 5/5. One particular element that stood out was the way that the psychological factors were dealt with was off hand, the motivations of characters behaviours and the fixing of some problems are dealt with by waving a big psychological magic wand. I’m pretty sure this is not what the author wanted and this was a big missed opportunity to make this a winner. The ending leaves an open space for another book, whilst being satisfying enough for the reader. The main changes I would want in this book would be to develop some of the criminals/offenders in it some more, this would lead to a more believable ending. In any future book, as a reader I would like to see Gemma Woodstock become a stronger character with more willingness to confront her fears, not using the Fleet emotional crutch, but also showing us a bit more of the process of this change, psychoanalysis, meditation, chamomile tea or whatever it takes. Having said that tough jobs with long shifts including nights inevitably lead to some vices and weakness, so a good balance of character flaw is needed.
This is a very entertaining first book and Sarah Bailey should be very pleased with her characters.
Written in the first person perspective of Gemma Woodstock throughout, you really get a feel of how she lives her life. This is gritty stuff, she has a fair amount of self loathing. Her disjointed relationship with her distant young son is mainly sustained by phone calls, she loves him but can’t consolidate this with her life as a detective in a far away city. She has her vices, booze and cigarettes, her sex life is a series of one night stands with poor quality men, while beginning a relationship with a decent chap, who hasn’t seen friends make that same mistake. At work her strengths are her analytical mind and organisational skills. She doesn’t have a lot of emotional strength and disappointingly breaks down and cries in a few too many situations where you would expect a police officer to have a more resilience, but she does recognise this flaw and question if she is cut out for this line of work, but this is a stereotype too often applied to women.
If you’re a feminist then don’t expect much from the way the issues of abuse, discrimination and general sexism are dealt with by the characters. This must reflect the author’s research on the attitudes within the environment of the characters, institutional sexism in Police departments in particular is believable.
The first person perspective really involves you in the plot, keenly turning the pages. You can guess who did it if you want but it’s only a 40% probability guess. There are enough twists and turns to keep you guessing up until the end. This book was 4/5 possibly going on 5/5 until the last 30 pages, it was too quick to deal with the many loose ends. The final scene wasn’t believable enough either, you’ll slap the book saying why didn’t they do this, they are trained police officers aren’t they? A lot of the answers you demand are given in the summary in the epilogue, some of these should definitely have been covered in the action ahead of this. But apart from that it concludes well, draws the many lose ends together really well, just not in the way that could have elevated this book to 5/5. One particular element that stood out was the way that the psychological factors were dealt with was off hand, the motivations of characters behaviours and the fixing of some problems are dealt with by waving a big psychological magic wand. I’m pretty sure this is not what the author wanted and this was a big missed opportunity to make this a winner. The ending leaves an open space for another book, whilst being satisfying enough for the reader. The main changes I would want in this book would be to develop some of the criminals/offenders in it some more, this would lead to a more believable ending. In any future book, as a reader I would like to see Gemma Woodstock become a stronger character with more willingness to confront her fears, not using the Fleet emotional crutch, but also showing us a bit more of the process of this change, psychoanalysis, meditation, chamomile tea or whatever it takes. Having said that tough jobs with long shifts including nights inevitably lead to some vices and weakness, so a good balance of character flaw is needed.
This is a very entertaining first book and Sarah Bailey should be very pleased with her characters.