Having read Barclay before, and enjoyed whatever it was of his that I'd read, I was looking forward to this. I'd read a couple of heavy books and needed a decent murder mystery for a change.

What a disappointment. I will gladly admit that I often am not able to figure out the "bad guy" in a mystery book and that then tends to be how I judge whether I'll like a mystery or not. If I can figure out who the bad guy is, especially if I can figure it out near the beginning, then I figure my rating of the book will be low.

That's how this book was for me. I picked out the bad guy pretty much from the get-go simply because they were such an evil caricature. And then the means by which the bad guy could be bad was simply preposterous.

Actually I found most of the characters in this book were caricatures - including our main protagonist, Miles.

This book ended up being a speed read for me. As I say, disappointing.