This opens with a detective named Poe strung up on a hook in a meat packing warehouse waiting for a serial killer to arrive. We then flash back to the events leading up to his predicament.
Although I did kind of enjoy the story, I have a lot of issues with this book.
The style of writing is very very basic. That seems to be a common factor in these Reading Agency quick read books. It wouldn't kill the editors to allow some style in the wring.
The characters in this are drawn with very very broad strokes. They're complete caricatures. Poe is your good cop who can't stick to the rules, permanently at odds with his superior officers.
His assistant in crimefighting, the civilian Tilly Bradshaw is an autistic genius to a ridiculous degree. You might as well say she's a magician, the number of impossible things she does that are just explained away as "she's a computer genius". She can do literally anything with computers, it takes her 4 seconds to open a complete stranger's laptop, she has no special equipment to do this, she's just a genius. It takes me 10 seconds to log in to my laptop and I know the password. It really does take the mickey. The author has decided that computers can do absolutely anything and that she doesn't need to explain how in anything but the most surface level detail.
The gangsters have the most ridiculous nicknames. they're comically bad and make it very difficult to take them seriously as a threat to our intrepid inspector.
Despite all this, Craven manages to make an interesting story with a twist in the tale and overall I enjoyed the read, despite cringing through most of the pages. I am probably going to read something full length by Craven and hope that the issues in this book are not typical.
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