This story initially starts with Sara, who finds her husband tortured and brutally murdered after finding a spine-tingling message on her answerphone. The discovery of the body is a pulse-racing moment and Jackson doesn’t hold back with his description of this gruesome and haunting murder. The characterisation was good- with their strong personalities and added friction between officers on the case it was likely to be a fantastic read. However, I felt somewhat deflated after reading this, especially when it had bags of potential (the story wasn’t even focussed on the murder mentioned). I definitely feel there were a few things that let this book down and why I rated it only 3 stars.
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Firstly, although this was a series it read well as a stand-alone story and you had enough information about long-standing characters that it didn’t matter if you’d not read previous books. With that being said the author didn’t conclude the story in any way or allude to any possible ending that you can establish yourself- one thing I absolutely hate in a book! Secondly, I found the overall story to be rather unrealistic and too far-fetched to be believable: the clown aspects and the blow-by-blow accounts of Sara Prior’s fights just didn’t do it for me! However the biggest flaw for me we was there were no real viable suspects for me that potentially could have been either the killer, Waldo or both; as a reader I love to have some characters within the story who could be involved so I feel part of the story as it unravels. The redeeming aspects for the book that allowed me to give it 3 stars (as opposed to my initial rating of 2) was the small surprise towards the end and the fact that Jackson writes with a good pace. Overall, not my favourite read- I think I would have enjoyed this more if the focus of the story was the murder investigation as opposed to DS Cody’s personal demons.
⠀⠀
Firstly, although this was a series it read well as a stand-alone story and you had enough information about long-standing characters that it didn’t matter if you’d not read previous books. With that being said the author didn’t conclude the story in any way or allude to any possible ending that you can establish yourself- one thing I absolutely hate in a book! Secondly, I found the overall story to be rather unrealistic and too far-fetched to be believable: the clown aspects and the blow-by-blow accounts of Sara Prior’s fights just didn’t do it for me! However the biggest flaw for me we was there were no real viable suspects for me that potentially could have been either the killer, Waldo or both; as a reader I love to have some characters within the story who could be involved so I feel part of the story as it unravels. The redeeming aspects for the book that allowed me to give it 3 stars (as opposed to my initial rating of 2) was the small surprise towards the end and the fact that Jackson writes with a good pace. Overall, not my favourite read- I think I would have enjoyed this more if the focus of the story was the murder investigation as opposed to DS Cody’s personal demons.