BOOK REVIEW: Shatter The Bones (DS Logan McRae, #7) by Stuart MacBride

I love how MacBride is constantly raising the stakes for his main character DS Logan McRae. Shatter the Bones is the seventh book in the best-selling police procedural, murder-mystery series set in Aberdeen, Scotland. The case this time is truly insane: a mother-daughter duo who are leading a televised American Idol-style reality show are kidnapped and the public is being extorted for the ransom. To goose the pot the kidnappers are releasing videos and bits and pieces (i.e toes) of their hostages every few days. leading to wall-to-wall media coverage and general public hysteria. The pressure on the police to solve the crime and capture the perpetrators is intense. Meanwhile Logan is making very bad decisions as he works on other cases, and that eventually ends up producing life-changing consequences for him and his current girl friend Samantha (who works in the Coroner's office) who he has only recently committed to fully. One of the entertaining aspects of the books is that Logan is not one to follow the rules and the ways that he forges his own path while solving every case he faces is lots of fun. MacBride does a very effective job of injecting humor and near-farce into Logan's professional interactions with his nominal boss, the morally questionable DI Roberta Steel and his amusing sidekick, DC Simon Rennie. If it takes a village to solve a crime, Rennie is the village idiot. As usual with the high-profile cases Logan finds himself ensnared in,  there is someone from a rival police force who is brought in to assist Aberdeen's Finest; the professional jousting and office intrigue are a wonder to behold. Overall, the Logan McRae mysteries are some of the most enjoyable British police procedurals in the mystery crime-thriller genre: amusing, action-packed and always very clever. Title: Shatter The Bones. Author: Stuart MacBride. Paperback: 438 pages. Publisher: HarperCollins. Date Published: January 6, 2011. Date Read: October 22, 2017. GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★ (5.0/5.0). OVERALL GRADE: A (3.67/4.0). PLOT: A. IMAGERY: A-. IMPACT: A+. WRITING: A.