Darker Than Night

Quite an exciting and fast-paced novel, characters are semi-interesting. Good, fun reading at airports. *mild spoilers ahead* That said, the plot and characters themselves are slightly disappointing. Maybe I was misled by the synopsis or just after an Agatha Christie binge, but I feel a more apt title would be "A few days in the life of a killer and some cops." The killer goes about to commit multiple crimes and the main characters are barely any closer to solving it. I was hoping with each crime, a clue or something would help our main characters to piece together something. Zilch. Ok, maybe one clue after several crimes. That's it. The story also suffers from "show, don't tell" (which I admit is not an easy thing). The reader is being constantly told that our main characters are "the best at what they do/hella good detective etc", yet there are barely any signs of it. Midway through the book the plot stalls and the dialogue becomes repetitive: with more crimes being committed, the chief puts pressure on Quinn (main character), Quinn has no clues etc". And speaking about our main characters, despite us readers told how good they are, they did little to solve the crime. The big clue came from a someone else tipping Quinn, not from their detective work. The final confrontation happened because the potential victim contacted the police after seeing the news, not because Quinn and his gang managed to come up with a list of suspects. All in all, admittedly a fun and exciting page turner, but not one that left me satisfied. And occasionally annoyed at the repetitive dialogue.

John Lutz creates charscters you expect to meet for lunch! And evil twists you can never imagine. The term 'page turner' may have been invented for his books.

Nice to read the first one I've read alot of the series their not bad I like pearl