[books 2013] Dark Blood
Nov. 15th, 2013 02:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulro67. Dark Blood by Stuart MacBride
No sooner had I got back from my latest trip to Aberdeen, when I found out there's a series of detective novels set there. So I headed down to my local library and grabbed a random book from the series to see what it's all about (volume 6, as it turns out).
I remain unconvinced. The detectives are all dicks. Including the DI, who is a lesbian whose sexual harrassment of female colleagues is as offensive and overt as any of the men on the force. Having said that, it obviously doesn't shy away from confronting these issues, because in no way is sexual harassment being presented as entertainment or normalised.
It's really violent. And I say that as someone who reads A LOT of crime novels.
The main detective (Logan MacRae) is constantly in trouble because he has way too many cases on his plate and is always letting the ball drop on something. That's not fair, it's not so much that as he's working for two DIs, one of whom can't seem to understand that his counterfeit goods operation might be less pressing than a murder enquiry. While this is probably close to the truth of detective work, and is a good way of creating suspense and tension (he'll be just about to make one important discovery when he gets interrupted about a different case), it makes for a frustrating read at times.
Having said all that, and having spent the first half of the book going "this isn't bad or anything, but it's not for me", I did read the second half in two days because I wanted to find out What Happens Next.
Also MacRae's girlfriend is a goth forensic scientist who is strong and Takes No Shit.
This series hasn't knocked anything off the Must Read Now list, but I will probably get around to taking more of them out of the library at some undefined point in the future.
No sooner had I got back from my latest trip to Aberdeen, when I found out there's a series of detective novels set there. So I headed down to my local library and grabbed a random book from the series to see what it's all about (volume 6, as it turns out).
I remain unconvinced. The detectives are all dicks. Including the DI, who is a lesbian whose sexual harrassment of female colleagues is as offensive and overt as any of the men on the force. Having said that, it obviously doesn't shy away from confronting these issues, because in no way is sexual harassment being presented as entertainment or normalised.
It's really violent. And I say that as someone who reads A LOT of crime novels.
The main detective (Logan MacRae) is constantly in trouble because he has way too many cases on his plate and is always letting the ball drop on something. That's not fair, it's not so much that as he's working for two DIs, one of whom can't seem to understand that his counterfeit goods operation might be less pressing than a murder enquiry. While this is probably close to the truth of detective work, and is a good way of creating suspense and tension (he'll be just about to make one important discovery when he gets interrupted about a different case), it makes for a frustrating read at times.
Having said all that, and having spent the first half of the book going "this isn't bad or anything, but it's not for me", I did read the second half in two days because I wanted to find out What Happens Next.
Also MacRae's girlfriend is a goth forensic scientist who is strong and Takes No Shit.
This series hasn't knocked anything off the Must Read Now list, but I will probably get around to taking more of them out of the library at some undefined point in the future.
