quippe | Entries tagged with stuart macbride

The Blurb On The Back:

She can’t prove he did it … But she might die trying.

Detective Chief Inspector Roberta Steel got caught fitting up Jack Wallace – that’s why they demoted her and quashed his sentence. Now he’s back on the streets and women are being attacked again. Wallace has to be responsible, but if Detective Sergeant Steel goes anywhere near him, his lawyers will get her thrown off the force for good.

The Powers That Be won’t listen to her, not after what happened last time. According to them, she’s got more than enough ongoing cases to keep her busy. Perhaps she could try solving a few instead of harassing an innocent man?

Steel knows Wallace is guilty. And the longer he gets away with it, the more women will suffer. The question is: how much is she willing to sacrifice to stop him?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Stuart MacBride’s standalone crime thriller (which can be read alongside the Logan McRae series) is a funny if at times uneven read that nods at A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh books to hilarious effect and although Steel sometimes veers towards caricature, she’s still Scotland’s fiercest detective who takes no rubbish from anyone.

NOW WE ARE DEAD was released in the United Kingdom on 2nd November 2017. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Welcome to the Misfit Mob …

Police Scotland’s dumping ground for officers it can’t get rid of, but wants to. Officers like DC Callum MacGregor, lumbered with all the boring go-nowhere cases. So when an ancient mummy is dumped at the Oldcastle tip, it’s Callum’s job to find out which museum it’s been stolen from.

But when Callum turns up links between the mysterious mummy and several recent disappearances, life suddenly starts to get more interesting. With O Division’s Major Investigation Teams stretched to breaking point, the Misfit Mob unexpectedly finds themselves on the trail of a serial killer who isn’t afraid to take his time.

The question is, can Callum overcome his troubled past, not to mention his troubled present, in time to save himself, let alone anyone else?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Stuart MacBride’s standalone crime thriller has a preposterous story that’s filled with unlikely coincidence and some easily guessable twists but the relationships between the characters, the humour and the fact that MacBride makes you root for his Misfit Mob held my attention from beginning to end and made it enjoyable. Callum is a really likeable character – constantly suffering for trying to do the right thing – he’s the glue that holds the book together because you actually care what happens to him. I enjoyed the antagonism between him and McAdams but wished that there’d been more of a confrontation with Elaine following a revelation and two key revelations about his family life came far too late to be credible. The Misfit Mob themselves work well and I really enjoyed the friction between them with MacBride really making the dialogue pop, which made it a shame not to find out what happened to one of them at the end (and in a similar vein, two of the victims don’t get a definitive resolution either). I thought that the killer was a bit too easy to guess and I wanted more of an explanation for how they managed it but there’s potential left for a sequel, which I would definitely check out.

A DARK SO DEADLY was released in the United Kingdom on 20th April 2017. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.