BOOK REVIEW: Quieter Than Killing (DI Marnie Rome, #4) by Sarah Hilary

The fourth book in the DI Marnie Rome series written by Sarah Hilary is Quieter Than Killing. (I have enjoyed the others, Someone Else's Skin, No Other Darkness, and Tastes Like Fear,) This time the story is about a series of violent attacks of people who have previously been accused or convicted of violent or criminal behavior. DI Rome and her partner DS Noah Jake realize that they are looking for a vigilante, someone who has taken the law into their own hands (and decided to break the law in order to punish others they think deserve it).

As they try to find the vigilante, Rome and Jake are also faced with the kidnapping of the 10-year-old so of a jailhouse informant as well as the trashing of the house where Rome’s parents were murdered by her adopted brother, Stephen Keele, who has been moved to an adult prison now that he’s over 18.

There are multiple strengths in these Sarah Hilary mystery thrillers and many of these strengths appear in Quieter Than Killing.
First among these is the depiction of Marnie as a strong female protagonist, working in a predominantly male environment of a police department that solves major crimes in London. Another strong feature of these books is the inclusion of Noah as an openly gay, Black police officer who serves as her deputy. (There are multiple references to how good looking Noah is, as well as his boyfriend Dan, but this doesn’t mean that he’s not subject to both racism and homophobia while doing his job.) Hilary does an excellent job of fleshing out many of the characters in these books, especially in the ways she provides enough information to give the reader insight into their psyches, this includes the criminals and the police officers who try to catch them. One other compelling aspect of the Marnie Rome books is the backstory of Marnie and Noah, and as the books have progressed, there have been developments in how these characters have dealt with and adapted to changes.

I would definitely place these books in the genre of psychological thriller. In Quieter Than Killing, like in her other books, the author presents the crimes (and the criminals) in such a way that their psychologies are revealed and this has quite a memorable impact on the reader. I recommend this book and the others in the series (you don’t have to read them in sequence but why wouldn’t you?) to people who like the work of Jane Casey and Val McDermid, who are other British mystery authors with female protagonists in their books.

Title: Quieter Than Killing (DI Marnie Rome, #4).
Author: Sarah Hilary.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 432 pages.
Publisher: Headline.
Date Published: March 19, 2017.
Date Read: February 19, 2022.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★☆  (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Cross and Burn (Tony Hill / Carl Jordan, #8) by Val McDermid

Cross and Burn is the eighth installment in the British police procedural crime thriller series written by Val McDermid featuring psychological profiler Dr. Tony Hill and Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan set in the Manchester suburbs of Bradfield in the north of England. This series is one of the most exciting and compelling entries in the multiple genres that it occupies (which include suspense thriller, British police procedural, and murder mystery). It is also one of the rare series that has both a male and female lead in a primarily non-romantic relationship.

I hadn’t read one of McDermid’s books in a while so I had forgotten about one of the most effective aspects of her books, which is the inclusion of first-person perspectives of future crime victims. By doing this, she connects the reader to the characters and increases the impact of their deaths at the hands of the homicidal psychopaths that tend to populate her books. It’s also surprising because many authors generally use first-person mode to indicate important characters who may be placed in extreme peril and ultimately survive, but McDermid seems to be unafraid of killing off these characters. It's not like they always die or always survive, so the uncertainty ratchets up the suspense in the reader.

As I have said before, one of the added pleasures of reading a long-running series in order that have a repeated primary protagonist (like Jane Casey’s Maeve Kerrigan, Stephen Booth’s Cooper & Fry, Peter Robinson’s Alan Banks or Peter James’ Roy Grace, for example) is the deepening relationship the reader has with the characters due to increased familiarity via repetition. In the Hill & Jordan series, the two have gone through a lot together, especially in the previous book’s The Retribution which resulted in the horrendous death of Carole Jordan’s only brother and his female partner. This happened as a direct consequence of her and Tony’s work of hunting and capturing a serial killer (who escaped and went on a killing spree). It causes Carol to (irrationally) blame Tony for his inability to realize that once the serial killer had escaped that his revenge might have included her family, quit her job as a police officer, and cut off all contact with Tony and her former colleagues in the Bradfield Metropolitan police department.

In addition to including first-person perspectives of victims McDermid often includes first-person perspectives of the perpetrator as well. This is something other suspense thriller authors do as well, but generally not as cleverly as she does. In Cross and Burn, the reader watches with horror while a deranged male chauvinist targets women who happen to resemble Carol Jordan, capturing them, making them play out his twisted vision of a “perfect subservient wife” and then eventually killing them when they fail to meet his insane “standards.” Through back channels Tony is brought in to help with the case by DI Paula McIntyre when she’s approached for help by the teenage son of a missing woman who works in the same hospital as her wife. For some reason Paula’s new boss decides that circumstantial evidence tying Tony to one of the disappearances of a woman later found dead means that he is likely the serial killer the Bradfield police are looking for. The only good outcome of this bizarre development is that it gets Carol out of her mourning funk enough to try and help Tony fight the charges.

Another one of the notable features of McDermid’s books are the (sometimes gory) scenes of violence and torture. She doesn’t shy away from the depiction of the horrors that violent crimes, both physical and psychological, can produce. Despite this, her books are always entertaining, well-plotted and memorable. In fact, overall Cross and Burn is an example of a master working at the height of her craft, cementing her status as one of the best in the business by creating another spine-chilling entry in her long running series.

Title: Cross and Burn (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan, #8).
Author: Val McDermid.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 438 pages.
Publisher: Mariner Books.
Date Published:  October 22, 2013.
Date Read: October 8, 2021.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★½☆  (4.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A-/B+ (3.5/4.0).

PLOT: B+.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A-.

BOOK REVIEW: After The Fire (Maeve Kerrigan, #6) by Jane Casey

After The Fire by Jane Casey is the sixth book in the British police procedural series featuring Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan. Kerrigan and her immediate supervisor Detective Inspector Josh Derwent are part of the Major Crimes Squad of the London Metropolitan Police. In After The Fire the major crime is a suspicious fire on the top two floors of a public housing, high-rise apartment complex (called an “estate”) which leads to the discovery of three corpses, two charred to a crisp and one battered from a fall from a great height.

As with most good mysteries, the question of whodunnit is just one of many questions posed to the reader. Some of the more compelling aspects of the story being told in After The Fire come from the continuation of the ongoing developments in Maeve Kerrigan’s life, whose significance is heightened by the fact this is the sixth book in the series. Due to events in the previous book (The Kill), Maeve’s love life is a bit rocky and she’s dealing with ongoing potential threats to her personal safety. Her relationship with DI Josh Derwent, her immediate superior officer and unorthodox investigation partner undergoes some surprising (but welcome) maturation in this edition of the series. Her boss is still problematic, and the tensions of being an attractive woman in a predominantly male profession is still an important part of the day-to-day activity of this police procedural series.

The structure of After The Fire is different from previous entries in the series, since it involves a deadly arson where there are numerous victims (in addition to the dead ones several other residents had their homes destroyed) some of whom become suspects as we learn more about the unsavory nature of their sources of income and why they were living in a run-down housing estate even though it’s clear they had other financial options. In most police procedurals the limited number of suspects is key and here the problem is the converse.

Overall, After The Fire is a satisfying genre book; I believe all of the central mysteries in the plot are resolved. One does find out who caused the fire and why, as well as what and whom were responsible for all the dead bodies discovered at the scene. We even get a surprising resolution of Maeve’s ongoing personal safety concern. The primary unsolved story thread involve her personal and professional lives, but by their very nature that’s not something that one would expect to remain static in a long-running series anyway. I look forward to reading more about Maeve and her attempt to obtain satisfaction in one or more of these areas in future books.

Title: After The Fire (Maeve Kerrigan, #6).
Author: Jane Casey.
Format: Hardcover.
Length: 317 pages.
Publisher: Minotaur Books.
Date Published: May 3, 2016.
Date Read: August 14, 2021.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: A.

Blood on the Tongue (Cooper & Fry, #3) by Stephen Booth

Blood on the Tongue is the third book in the police-procedural, murder-mystery series featuring Detective Sergeant Deborah Fry and Detective Constable Ben Cooper written by Stephen Booth set in the Peak District north of Nottingham in Derbyshire. In the first three books there have been three very different but compelling mysteries that Cooper and Fry have successfully solved. The central feature at the heart of these books is the relationship between two very different main characters. Cooper is an insider, while Fry is an outsider; Cooper is well-liked, Fry is not. Cooper is a DC, Fry is a DS (and Cooper’s boss). Cooper grew up in Edendale on a family farm with multiple siblings and a father who was a copper, Fry grew up in foster care in the big city of Manchester with a sister whom she has lost contact with due to addiction. 

Booth often gives us access to his protagonists’ thoughts and feelings in order to engage the reader. Fry basically despises everything that (she thinks) Cooper stands for. She views him as a daydreaming Boy Scout who doesn’t really understand the point of policing. He views her as strange and emotionally distant but an efficient cop who doesn’t understand that empathy and cultural competence can improve police outcomes. What I noticed more in Blood on the Tongue than in previous books is that Fry spends a lot more of her mental energy thinking about Cooper than Cooper does thinking about her. Their relationship is somewhat asymmetrical in that regard. Similarly, although they began the series equal in rank, Fry now outranks him, which means their professional relationship is also asymmetrical as well.

There are three main mysteries in Blood on the Tongue: 1) a dead body of an unidentified well-dressed man is found at the side of a road during a massive snow storm after a snow plough hits the corpse; 2) a dead body of a woman who they discover had given birth to a baby within the last two months is also found frozen in the snow (the whereabouts of Baby Chloe becomes the more important mystery here because it seems like the woman died by deliberately exposing herself to the wintry elements); 3) a 57-year-old cold case of the disappearance of a survivor of a World War II plane crash that killed 5 men, including one Polish soldier whose brother still lives in the area, is being actively investigated by the survivor’s attractive Canadian granddaughter trying to clear his name of the ‘deserter’ label. Of course these mysteries lead to other questions/puzzles: Who is Baby Chloe’s father? Will Ben and Allison (the Canadian granddaughter) hook up? Why did Chloe’s mom kill herself? Why do so many of the people involved with the recently discovered dead bodies also have connections to the decades-old crash?

As with all good sequential mystery series, a significant fraction of the appeal of the book is the new information provided about the protagonists Cooper and Fry. Cooper finally bites the bullet and moves out of his family’s farm into an apartment ‘in town.’ He fitfully adapts to living by himself (although he has a stray cat or two as a roommate) and after he moves in he begins to realize that maybe the reason why Fry is so dedicated to her job is the fear of coming home to a lonely, empty apartment. Fry seems to be more and more interested in Cooper, what he’s thinking and what he’s doing (and whom he’s doing it with.) At one point she says to him directly “Sometimes I can’t tell what you’re thinking, Ben.” It’s bizarre to me that as Cooper’s superior officer she thinks she has the right to know his thoughts at all times when he’s on duty! However, at the end of the book her watchful eyes over him probably saved his life after Cooper makes a selfless (and reckless) decision to try and save a suicidal suspect from self-harm. Fry, of course, does the appropriate thing by calling for back-up instead of rushing into help without a clear plan or assessment of the danger of his actions.

Overall, Blood on the Tongue is another excellent entry in what is fast becoming one of my favorites in the genre of British police-procedural murder-mysteries (which experienced readers know is quite a large and varied genre). Readers of books by Peter Robinson, Peter James, Ian Rankin, Stuart MacBride and Jane Casey will likely agree with me that the Cooper & Fry series is an enjoyable addition to these lists. And, happily, there are more than a dozen more books in the series for me to read, which I intend to do!

Title: Blood on the Tongue.
Author: Stephen Booth.
Page Length: 400 pages.
Format: Kindle.
Publisher: Witness Impulse.
Date Published: December 3, 2013 (First Published 2002).
Date Read: December 18, 2020.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: The Kill (Maeve Kerrigan, #5) by Jane Casey

The Kill is the fifth entry in author Jane Casey’s British police procedural/murder mystery series starring Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan of the London Murder Squad.

The Kill begins with Maeve and her partner Detective Inspector Josh Derwent being called to the scene of an ambush shooting of a fellow Metropolitan Police officer in a parked car well after midnight. This appears to be the first of a series of fatal attacks on police officers in London, which is currently on edge following the mistaken killing of an unarmed Black youth by police officers recently.

Jane Casey does another excellent job of showing the reader Maeve’s thoughts and beliefs as she navigates being one of the few women in her male-dominated detective squad. All Maeve’s relationships are complicated. Josh is an attractive/repulsive chauvinist who is passionately devoted to catching and punishing lawbreakers so he doesn’t have to think about the demons in his murky military past. Their boss, Detective Chief Inspector Charles Godley, is someone who Maeve simultaneously worships for his prowess as a leader and despises for his personal failings. In The Kill, we find out some very significant information about Maeve's boyfriend Rob, while the status of their relationship is very much in doubt by the end of the book.

As usual, Maeve makes the key connections that lead to the resolution of the main mystery. Happily this time she is not placed in mortal danger as she tracks down the perpetrators but others near to her definitely find themselves in risky situations and this ensures that The Kill has a thrilling conclusion.

Title: The Kill.
Author: Jane Casey.
Paperback: 337 pages.
Publisher: Minotaur Books.
Date Published: June 2, 2015.
Date Read: August 7, 2020.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: The Stranger You Know (DS Maeve Kerrigan, #4) by Jane Casey

This is the fourth book in the DS Maeve Kerrigan series and may be the best of the bunch so far. I don't think this is not because Rob (or boyfriend/relationship drama) is such a small part of the story but the fact is he is out of the country for most of the time period covered in The Stranger You Know. I like the character of Rob, but I don't like the effect he has on Maeve's sensibilities.

Instead, The Stranger You Know is basically centered around Maeve’s relationship with her police detective partner DI Josh Derwent and his backstory. Derwent is a handsome (and vain) guy with a borderline personality disorder. In previous books he has been mostly a frequent foil and obnoxious obstacle for Maeve as he belittles and berates her while they ostensibly work together to solve crimes.

In The Stranger You Know, the London Murder Squad that Josh and Maeve work for are trying to track a serial killer who strangles his victims and then removes their eyes and places them in their hands, with no sexual contact and no forensic evidence left behind. In time, we find out that some twenty years before when Josh was almost 18 he was the prime suspect in the unsolved violent death of his 15(!)-year-old girlfriend, Angela Poole, who was found strangled with her eyes gouged out. Somewhat bizarrely it’s Angela’s own father who provided the airtight alibi for Josh which prevented him from being charged for murder as her dad had nearly run him over in the public bus he drove at the time and multiple riders could attest to the incident and cemented Josh's innocence.

Because of this unfortunate history, Josh and Maeve’s boss Superintendent Godley removes him from the task force working on solving the Gentleman Caller serial killer case as suspicion mounts that there are connections between that case and the Angela Poole cold case. Things get weirder as the psychological profile of the Gentleman Caller has multiple components that accurately describe DI Derwent. Godley’s second-in-command DCI Una Burt is clearly invested in the theory of Derwent as murderer. This is an example of the ways that interpersonal interactions between members of the team trying to solve the crime(s) become an important aspect of the story.

The author Jane Casey does a masterful job of lathering suspicion on Josh and his circle of friends from two decades before, with several red herrings and side mysteries that distract and attract Maeve (and Josh) as they try and find the killer (or killers??) responsible for Angela’s death and the most recent killings.

One excellent feature of the series is Casey’s characterization of Maeve by providing the reader almost nonstop access to her inner thoughts and in this book far less of the narrative tension is sourced from danger to Maeve and her questionable decisions than in previous entries. Instead the resolution of the cold case and an increasing trickle of discoveries and revelations about Derwent and his childhood friends are more than enough to keep the reader enthralled and entertained in The Stranger You Know.

It’s impressive how Casey has managed to use different styles and writing structures in the first four books of the series while still maintaining the general tropes and narrative structures of the murder-mystery genre. The first book The Burning was about a serial arsonist and multiple first-person accounts were included. The second book The Reckoning was about kidnappings and Maeve herself became a victim of crime in it twice). The third book The Last Girl has her relationship with Rob as a key feature and included more examples of how Josh and Maeve get results together despite their squabbles. The criminal in this book was not a serial killer.

Overall, the fourth book in the DS Maeve Kerrigan series is an excellent entry in the British police procedural with female main character genre with a compelling set of mysteries to be solved and surprising (and welcome) developments in the larger arcs involving her primary romantic relationship, her professional advancement in the police force and the obsessed criminal who is stalking her.

Title: The Stranger You Know
Author: Jane Casey.
Paperback: 400 pages.
Publisher: Minotaur Books.
Date Published: May 20, 2014.
Date Read: May 17, 2020.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★ (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: The Last Girl (Maeve Kerrigan, #3) by Jane Casey

I love Jane Casey’s Maeve Kerrigan series (as you can see from my reviews of The Reckoning and The Burning)!! The Last Girl is the third book in this British police procedural murder mystery series with a strong but definitely not perfect female protagonist. As I have said many times, what makes a strong genre book in my opinion, in addition to a compelling main character, are interesting and well-rounded secondary characters. We know it’s a genre book; there’s gonna be some horrific crime (usually a violent murder or three) and our hero is part of a team who is trying to catch the perpetrator or perpetrators while surviving/avoiding/managing interpersonal dynamics of the team members or familial/relationship drama (or both!). We return to these genre books not for the crime-of-the-week but because we are engaged with the characters due to our familiarity with their foibles.

Casey gets it. Her DS Maeve Kerrigan is at times frustratingly obtuse (especially when it comes to the relationship with her boyfriend Rob, another policeman) and is also very good at her job, despite her boor of a boss/partner, DI Josh Derwent. But as the reader we can both root for and rail against Maeve (sometimes in the same chapter!)

The mystery/crime in The Last Girl is particularly heinous. A mother and teen daughter are viciously attacked and killed in the living room while the daughter’s twin sister swam in the pool. The father was attacked (not fatally) in the upstairs bathroom. It turns out the family dynamic was a nightmare, starting with the father/husband who is a defense attorney whom the police had come across before in multiple cases and is a huge *ssh*le. But, that doesn’t mean he’s guilty, does it?

This third book in the series has a relatively surprising ending with a fair number of red herrings tossed in front of the reader for good measure. The longer arcs (Maeve’s increasingly serious relationship with Rob, the return of her dangerous stalker/peeping Tom, Maeve's professional career trajectory at the London Metropolitan Police Murder Squad) are becoming more significant than the resolution of this book’s crime. But that just makes me want to spend more time with Maeve, in the next book. Soon!

Title: The Last Girl.
Author: Jane Casey.
Paperback: 384 pages.
Publisher: Minotaur Books.
Date Published: May 21, 2013.
Date Read: April 13, 2020.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★½☆  (4.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Raven Black (Shetland Islands, #1) by Ann Cleeves

This is the first book in Ann Cleeves’ Shetland Islands series starring Inspector Jimmy Perez. The Shetland Islands are remote, sparsely populated islands north of Scotland and west of Norway that are part of the United Kingdom.

Raven Black begins with the discovery of a dead teenaged girl named Catherine. Almost a decade earlier another young girl named Catriona had disappeared and her body was never found. In both cases, a mentally challenged bachelor named Magnus Tait had been one of the last people to see the victim. Many people on the islands shunned him and there was a widespread belief he had gotten away with murder because no body had been found. When Catherine’s body is found they expect him to be arrested immediately.

Inspector Jimmy Perez is not so sure. The cases have some similarities but a lot of differences also. Both girls were parts of families who had moved to the Shetlands from “down south.” Both girls were considered independent and “high spirited.” Catherine was considered very intelligent by her teachers and popular in school. Ann Cleeves tells the story using first-person accounts from very many characters, including Catherine, her best friend Sally, Jimmy, Magnus and several others.

Raven Black is an atmospheric, psychological thriller about the effects of a violent crime in a very small community where everyone knows everything about their neighbors. However, newcomers arrive fairly often and try (and often fail) to be integrated into the community. Jimmy himself is from the community and went to the same schools as the murder victims but his family is from an even more remote island and they are clamoring for him to come home and stop this “police foolishness.”

The killer of the two girls (and the abductor of a third girl, another strong-willed outsider whose name begins with C) is revealed at the end, and it came as a complete and utter shock to me. That’s not that unusual as murder mystery novels go. However I think to maintain my interest in a series I need to be invested in the main character/detective and be intrigued/interested/amused by their sidekicks/colleagues. Jimmy Perez basically works alone. The setting of the book, in this remote small community IS the companion character. Sometimes if the setting is very unfamiliar that can provide a source of interest. Also one can be interested in a setting which is also very familiar. 

Unfortunately, Raven Black did not fully engage my interest. I’m somewhat surprised by this because I know the Shetland Islands mysteries have been adapted into a very popular BBC TV series. However, I doubt I’ll be continuing. There are so many other detective series I’m interested in making progress on, like Jane Casey’s Maeve Kerrigan, Val McDermid’s Tony Hill/Carol Jordan and (of course) Stuart MacBride’s Logan McRae. Life’s too short to wade through books one does not connect with.

Title: Raven Black.
Author: Ann Cleeves.
Paperback: 374 pages.
Publisher: Minotaur Books.
Date Published: May 29, 2007.
Date Read: September 30, 2019.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★½☆  (3.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: B+ (3.33/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: B.
WRITING: B+.

BOOK REVIEW: The Reckoning (Maeve Kerrigan, #2) by Jane Casey

The Reckoning is the second book featuring Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan by Jane Casey. Kerrigan is a London police detective investigating major crimes like murder, kidnapping and violent assault. 

Maeve is one of the few women in her murder squad, and this impacts almost everything she does. In The Reckoning she is paired with DI Josh Derwent, a super macho detective who has a mysteriously long history with her boss, DCI Godley. The case that they are looking into in The Reckoning involves the brutal murder of three men who “have form” (i.e. are listed in police files because they have either been charged or convicted) for sexually molesting children, i.e. registered pedophiles. Surprisingly, early on Kerrigan and Derwent discover the person(s) responsible for these pedophile murders: a crime boss named John Skinner who Godley and Derwent have had serious run-ins with before. However this is not the end of the mystery but the beginning of another. Skinner leads the police to an even more heinous series of crimes, starting with the disappearance of his 16-year-old daughter after she attended a pop-up nightclub at a warehouse.

Meanwhile, while Maeve is involved in trying to solve these crimes she is getting to know the only other female member of the murder squad, Liv Dwyer. Dwyer is paired with Maeve’s former boyfriend/love interest DC Rob Langton who Maeve is in an on/off relationship with. Maeve moves into a new housing situation (a large house converted into six apartments where she doesn’t tell her roommates what her job is and where her male flatmates seem a bit too interested in making her feel welcome to the neighborhood). Things get even weirder when police find a video of Maeve on an underground website doing things which makes it clear she is being videostalked by a creepy, secret admirer. The website is run by the same people who are the promoters for the night club where the 16-year-old disappeared.

Overall, The Reckoning is a very well-done British police procedural with a suspenseful plot and a very strong set of supporting characters. There’s a fair amount of time (almost too much) spent on Maeve’s romantic relationship with Rob which distracts from the primary story but since I like both characters it didn’t cause me to lose interest or detract from my overall engagement with the book. I really look forward to reading the rest of the books in the series although I do hope they settle the Rob-Maeve connection one way or the other very soon!

Title: The Reckoning.
Author: Jane Casey.
Paperback: 373 pages.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date Published: October 1, 2011.
Date Read: July 30, 2019.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A-.

BOOK REVIEW: The Burning (Maeve Kerigan, #1)by Jane Casey

I’m reasonably picky about the books I read. Usually my criteria is an average rating of 4.0 or better so The Burning by Jane Casey (with an average of 3.78) is unusual. But I have been looking for a good police procedural murder mystery with  a female protagonist and the books by Maeve Kerrigan have been on my TBR pile for quite awhile so I decided to give Book 1 in the series a try. I’m glad I did!

If The Burning is the lowest rated book in the DC Kerrigan series then I am in for a treat as I read this series because I thought the first entry was fantastic! In The Burning we are introduced to Maeve Kerrigan as a first person character, a tall,  female Police Detective of Irish descent in an all-male, chauvinistic murder squad trying to find the “Burning Man” serial killer who is bludgeoning women all over London to death and then burning their bodies. Maeve is an interesting character and when the book starts she gets assigned the case of a murder which initially appears to be the 5th Burning Man corpse but may be an attempted copy cat. The victim is Rebecca Haworth, a rich, young beautiful 
woman who everyone thinks “had it all.”

In addition to Maeve's we also have chapters that are POV’s of Louise North, Rebecca’s best friend, who is suspicious of Rebecca’s ex-boyfriend Gil Maddick. Gil definitely sets off Maeve’s police intuition as NOT being a good egg and we (the reader) have an interesting set up for an intriguing puzzle.

I quite liked The Burning. It is a bit simplistic in the way it fulfills it’s genre trappings but I’m quite okay with that. (I love the police procedural British murder mystery genre!) However, I was a bit annoyed by the seemingly inevitable romantic sub-plot (with one of her co-workers, no less). Although I didn’t guess who the murderer was  before it was revealed (even though it’s really not that difficult since there really are only two options to choose from ) I’m quite looking forward to reading the other books in the Maeve Kerrigan series, and I believe other fans of Peter Robinson’s DCI Alan Banks, Val McDermid’s Carol Jordan & Tony Hill or Stuart MacBride’s Logan McRae will enjoy these books.

Title: The Burning.
Author: Jane Casey.
Paperback: 354 pages.
Publisher: Minotaur.
Date Published: November 1, 2010.
Date Read: July 4, 2019.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★½☆☆  (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).
PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: A.