This book, the first in a series, has been in myTBR pile for a while. I wish I'd read it earlier because this is a cracking police procedural. The plot is gripping but this book is most definitely character driven. And what a cast of characters! There's DCI Daley, a Glasgow cop with a hot temper and an unfaithful wife. His sidekick is DS

Good Read.

I really enjoyed this book and will read the rest of the series. It was a bit long and some of the musings of the main characters ended up bogging down the story rather than enhancing it. With a good edit, this is a five star read.

I found this book to be a bit marmite, there were some elements that I genuinely loved and some that I hated. I enjoyed it as a whole and I have already started the next in the series, so decided to go straight down the middle with a 3-star rate.

What were my ‘loved it’ parts? I hear you not asking or caring.

I really loved the cast of characters. It was quite a character driven plot so it was imperative that I took to Daley, Scott and the others in order to keep reading. Though we didn’t get much of a feel for other team members, the easy comradery between Daley and Scott, the impetuous nature of Daley and Liz’s relationship and even the interactions with the more minor characters about the town made the book.
I am incredibly curious about how some of these characters will develop, hence why I’ve already started book 2. Will Daley and Liz live happily ever after? Will Scott cough up a lung? What is going on with sleazeball Donald? Will we have more fortune-seeing boatsmen?!

I also loved the setting and the way that it was so tangibly written. I could almost taste the salty sea air during parts of the novel, and could quite easily imagine the little seaside town with its harbour and little pubs and streets with it’s lumbering DCI moving through them.
The brutality of the murders was also enjoyable. The author certainly didn’t shy away from making the characters suffer, and even through in some curveballs, one of which made me gasp out loud – another sign of a good book.

This sounds positive, I hear you not saying, what were the parts that you didn’t like?

I found it quite clunky at times with regard to the writing. There were two key elements that played into this and made me shift with annoyance in my chair.

Firstly, the point of views/narrators. For the most part this was Daley, but every time the POV changed it was usually a signal that some shit was about to go down. Change to Archie and shit goes down. Change to Liz and shit goes down. It just removed all tension from the plot in these instances because it was obvious that I should expect something the moment the POV changed. Especially toward the end of the book when it was flicking between Liz and Daley like a tennis match. I genuinely felt very little tension until Liz’s POV ceased and I was allowed to be as much in the dark as Daley over the status of his wife.

In much the same way, there was an element towards the end of the book in which the killer moves from describing Liz in GREAT detail, especially her breasts, and suddenly just starts referring to ‘the body’. This was like a neon flashing light that this was not Liz. It was trying so hard to be subtle that it was in fact, quite the opposite. Again, I kind of felt a bit deflated that the tension had been significantly cut at a crucial point. It would have been better for me not to have that section from the POV of the killer, but perhaps Daley spots the killer carving someone up and we are all suspended in the ‘is-it-or-isn’t-it-her’ purgatory for a bit.

Now, I enjoyed the whole premise of the plot and I ended up enjoying the killer and their motivations, however I felt at times it was a bit too big for itself. For example, when there was the introduction of drugs and Latvian mobsters and whatever else, I was a bit like… No mate. I want small Scottish village Midsomer Murders, not global drug empires.

There was a lot of focus and time spent on this element and I thought it could have been better spent either introducing more of the team in greater detail, or by including more police procedural. There was much character progression and relationship building and then some under-the-cover-of-night drug busting with machine guns and whatever else, yet when you try and think what the police actually investigated, it was very little. They didn’t even find out who one of the victim's next-of-kin was until about 80% through the book.

Was it a police procedural or was it a drug-busting thriller? I suspect this will come up again in later books given the ending to this one but oh well.

Overall, I was really swinging both ways. I genuinely enjoyed a lot of the book, but the writing and plot let this down at times. I am hoping that the second book is a bit more wrinkle-free.

What I loved most about this book is the witty, extremely sarcastic humour.
I've also enjoyed listening the audiobook in a slightly Scottish accent, which I adore.
And I really like Daley, a nice, smart, down to earth man and investigator.