I know I’d said I wasn’t sure if I would continue on with this series but my curiosity got the better of me. And, once again, I’m not sure if I will but I am nothing if not a completionist.

I don’t know if it’s because this is the second in the series and Griffiths needed to flesh out the characters more for reader attachment but I found myself thinking the lead, DI Stephens, was a bit insufferable at times. More so than I found him in the first book; I’m not sure if this was on purpose or not. I understand these characters to be complex but all of the men sort of erring on the side of misogyny, with no overarching examination of that behavior, is quite distracting.

The problem is: the stories are fun. The writing is easy. I can shut my brain off and plug in for a while. These sit like cozy mysteries with a harsher edge to them, with the content matter that is. Griffiths shoves a British procedural into a 300~ page and you can gobble it up and move on to the next one without having intense, cloying feelings.

At the end of the day, I’ll probably finish the series as there are like three or four more in the series and I like using these books as little pleasant breaks, and they’re easily attainable at my library.

3/5 because I like the writing even if some of the continuous characters are kind of jerks.