Rating: 4/5
Review:
Enjoyable and engrossing
I enjoyed this book. It is a well-written and engrossing thriller and even though the idea of Cerebral Cop Pursuing Game-Playing Serial Killer is anything but new, it still kept me involved and gripped and it is an impressive debut novel.
There is a slow but very involving beginning including some intriguing puzzles. I thought the gently quickening pace was very well controlled, the plot largely plausible and the writing literate and enjoyable. Even the mandatory difficulties in the detective's personal life were sensibly and sensitively handled, and I found the analysis of his work-obsession (usually just a given in such novels) penetrating and convincing.
The book does have its faults. For example, Gurney's art work and the relationship complications it threatens to create are carefully and lengthily built up, and then just peter out unnoticed. Later in the book he does something uncharacteristically and frankly implausibly stupid in order to set up a Tense Climax, and I found the climax itself rather contrived and over-the-top. None of this is a real problem, though, and with a bit of goodwill and suspension of disbelief this is a very enjoyable, readable book with more depth than many. Recommended.
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