2014 mystery, third in Oswald's Inspector McLean series. Bodies are
found hanging in their homes in Edinburgh, apparently suicides. But
how did they all come to do it in just the same way at the same time?
I'm really rather getting to like this series. McLean is still a
decent detective who's severely messed up on a personal level, and
drops the ball here several times for the latter reasons both in his
own thinking and in his management of his team, gradually coming to
realise how much of his idiot superior's ranting at him might actually
have some basis in reality. Most of the policemen who know of him
dislike him, especially now when a third copper he's been assigned
to work with dies in a slightly odd way, but his core investigation
team, the people who've actually worked with him, still appreciate his
ability to spot connections and chase up correlations.
That said, I'm clearly able to reverse-engineer Oswald's thinking: as
before with his work, I spotted the killer on first appearance, and
was never in any doubt about how things would turn out thereafter. So
the book didn't really satisfy that mystery-solving urge which is the
reason I read mysteries in the first place. On the other hand there's
a B plot which connects to ongoing events in the series and ties back
to the A plot (I don't want to reveal major plot elements from Book
of Souls never mind this one), there are as always other
investigations which take time away from the one that seems most
important to the reader, and there's that lush and I think
deliberately overblown writing style that imbues the most trivial
things with a sense of rot and importance:
The Captain's Rest sounded more like the name of a seaside pub than
a place you'd buy bits and pieces for your yacht. There was no
mistaking what it was once you approached the place, though. Stacked
on the pavement outside the door, rolls of blue nylon rope, buoys,
wicker lobster pots for the tourist trade and heavy ironmongery
dared the casual thief to have a go. The windows displayed more
expensive and easily pocketed equipment, shielded from the sun by a
thin film of rumpled yellow cellophane on the inside of the glass.
If you wanted to buy a dead wasp, this was clearly the place to
come, too.
There is a magical element to these investigations, and it's growing
stronger, but McLean himself still doesn't believe in things he can't
see, and nothing in the plot relies on the reality of the magic.
McLean's constant battles with his immediate superior are getting a
bit old by now, and seem to form a major refrain here; I hope they're
toned down a bit in future.
This all runs at something of a slower pace than the previous books,
and I would very much not recommend starting the series here: there's
not only little explanation of who people are, there's no attempt to
build up the emotional capital which series readers will bring in
automatically. Followed by Dead Men's Bones.
(200th book review. Gosh.)
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