Rating: 4/5
Review:
Good, but not Joe Ide's best
I have loved this series so far. Hi Five is still pretty good but I
didn’t think it was up to the excellent standard of its
predecessors.
This time, Isaiah is
forced into helping the daughter of a serious thug and arms trader
who looks as though she’s guilty of murder. It turns out that she
has multiple personalities, which although quite well researched,
felt more like a handy plot device than a serious exploration of a
condition. Isaiah’s old love Grace returns and as he becomes drawn
deeper into investigating murky gang warfare and white supremacist
thuggery, their relationship is analysed and tested. Meanwhile, old
friends Dodson and TK both find themselves looking closely at their
lives, as do several of the villains of the piece...and as a result,
although there’s plenty of action it all felt a good deal more
preachy and less shrewdly witty than earlier books. Even the plot
and action seemed rather more generic than before, and I think Joe
Ide is better than that.
The book is still
several cuts above most of the stuff in this genre, but it has far
less of that real spark of originality, humour and quiet, understated
insight which made the first three IQ novels so special for me. It’s
not clear at the end of the book whether Isaiah will return; if he
does, I’ll certainly be reading the next one and hoping for a
return to Ide’s earlier near-classic standard.
This is still good
and still very readable, but not quite up there with Joe Ide’s
best.
(My thanks to W&N
for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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