Dead Man's Time
4th May 2017
The most disturbing opening chapters to a book I've read for a long time. Everything seems to be going wrong and the world feels a pretty grim place, especially as we see into the minds of villains setting out crazy schemes. Part of it is that there are so many plot threads, and all of them are dark ones.
Fortunately the book moves past that as what is ostensibly the main plot gets moving. An elderly lady has been robbed, and beaten. And it's up to our protagonist, Det Supt Grace, to solve the crime.
However that plot doesn't really feel like it's the main focus of the effort in this novel. Instead it seems like it's just there as a structure to hang the secondary plots, and there are at least four, around - moving characters into the right places for those to unfold. And this novel does make some pretty big changes to those soap-opera sub-plots that have been running through the series.
Overall, an entertaining read once the depressing start has been passed, but not quite on the level of the earlier books in terms of the actual mystery itself.