Rating: 4/5
Review:
Enjoyable - if disbelief is suspended
I found this an easy-to-read and quite enjoyable thriller, although it does have some pretty serious flaws. Belinda Bauer writes well on the whole: she structures and paces her story well, creates some believable characters and managed to grip me in spite of my reservations. I thought the central two police officers were well-drawn and the story of teenage first love was believable and very touching. I agree with some other reviewers here that there are some horribly forced similes and the odd out-of-place word or phrase, but there were few enough not to spoil it for me and in general I found Bauer's prose enjoyable to read.
I have to say that I found the kidnapper's motivation simply absurd. I can't say more without giving away too much, but as a reason for committing multiple major crimes it's just silly. Bauer also creates an unconvincing unscrupulous journalist for the sole purpose of having a go at the press and eventually being able to humiliate her in revenge, which was an unnecessary and annoying distraction. I found the mental state of Jonas Holly (the village policeman) pretty implausible, too, and then there's the absurdity of the appearance of yet *another* probable mass murderer in a tiny Exmoor village. Midsomer's per capita crime rate looks realistic by comparison.
However, I found that I did enjoy the book and became quite gripped by it - largely, I think, because Bauer created characters I cared about and I wanted to find out what happened to them. It has little of the originality and depth of Blacklands, but if you are prepared to suspend disbelief from a pretty great height I can recommend it as a readable, largely brain-off thriller.
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