Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsBoring.
Reviewed in Australia on 14 November 2019
So I read book 1 of the series and gave it three stars thinking the author would get more polished as the series progressed. For some reason I skipped books 2 and 3 (I maybe thought they sounded a bit dull) and settled for book 4 thinking it ought to be pretty damn good. But no.
There is a series of apparent suicides by hydrogen sulphide poisoning (the obvious choice naturally) where two more harmless chemicals are mixed to form a deadly brew. I think the author was saying it was, or was like, the mustard gas used in WWI bur more background would have been useful. Nobody thinks to link these suicides or consider them suspicious despite identical, printed, unsigned suicide notes. Also CCTV is not utilised until much later in the book. Oh, and you'd think the first death would prompt at least an external examination by a pathologist who would have seen other evidence. But no.
The dialogue was wooden and contrived. By the halfway point I was bored nearly to death and ready to DNF but I persevered with skim reading to the inevitable, predictable ending which I reached with a great sense of relief. The whole think was over in a matter of hours thankfully, although I will never get those hours back. Yes I am very cranky and may have given this 1.5 or even 2 stars if it was not the last in a bad bunch of books. Thankfully I am now reading something much more interesting and engaging.
