I’m afraid I couldn’t get on with Blood Games at all. I found it overblown, difficult to read and although it deals with important issues, it didn’t engage me at all.
The book opens with DS Nikki Parekh, in a dreadful emotional state after the death of her mother and under threat from her father, having a near-breakdown at a murder scene and, within a couple of chapters, being Taken Off The Case. We are normally spared this monumental cliché of the genre until at least half way through a book. Add to this a pantomimically useless and self-regarding replacement DI, a similarly pantomimically useless but ambitious fellow DS who is “Nikki’s nemesis” (yes, that phrase is actually used) and I began to struggle badly. In addition, I found the prose rather too peppered with stale usage and downright cliché in places. Someone “stands out like a sore thumb”, for example. Seriously?
The issues of youth knife crime, racism and so on which Liz Mistry deals with are important and timely, and I was looking forward to the setting in Bradford, but I’m afraid the presentation of them here just didn’t work for me. I battled on for quite a while, but I just couldn’t be doing with it and gave up in the end. I’m sorry to be so critical; others have plainly enjoyed this far more than I did, but I really wasn’t for me.
(My thanks to HQ for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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