Thursday, June 18, 2015

212 by Alafair Burke

212 is the third book in the Detective Ellie Hatcher series - however you can read this book without having read the rest of the series but it does contain spoilers for the previous books in the series so you may want to read Dead connection and City of fear (a.k.a. Angel's tip) first..

Detective Ellie Hatcher is serious about her job and doesn't let anything stand in her way - even when that something is an entitled rich lister who is more concerned about his carpet than the dead man found in the bed in one of his apartments.  It should be a relatively straight forward case, but Ellie and her partner J.J. Rogan keep running into resistance from the rich lister himself and some other unlikely sources.  Feeling the heat from her new lieutenant only makes the situation worse - it feels like it is coming from all sides at once.  

Having an ally in the district attorney's office doesn't really help - not when Ellie is determined to get her man.  When months have gone by with no real leads Hatcher and Rogan are assigned to what at first seems to be a completely unrelated case, but as they delve into the case they discover some rather unexpected links between the cases.  Detective Ellie Hatcher is about to discover that the rich and powerful don't always play by the rules - and they have some interesting expectations from the police and courts of law.  It is a race against time for Ellie to solve the case before another life is lost to a seething mass of dark secrets and secret lives.

I thoroughly enjoyed City of fear (also published as Angel's tip) so I was eager to get my hands on the next book in the series - and while I did enjoy it I was also partly disappointed.  City of fear was fast paced and seemed to arrow towards the conclusion from start to finish - whereas 212 seems to meander and get a little lost while it tries to be a little bit clever and distract you from making certain discoveries too early.  I will admit that I can be somewhat of a harsh critic at times because I read so much and discard so many books because they fail to grab and engage me.  212 grabbed me, but at times I found myself distracted and put the book down, meaning it took several days for me to read.  This is usually the sign that I am not fully "into" the book, and while the conclusion was satisfying it took longer to get there than I would have expected. 

212 was not as good as City of fear and some of the other books I have read lately, but it was perfect for what it was - a somewhat twisted escape into the world of a NYPD detective battling against the "bad guys" in a world that is still male dominated and doesn't take her too seriously.  Hopefully the next book in the series has a bit more of the oomph that made City of fear so appealing.

If you like this book then try:

Reviewed by Brilla

No comments:

Post a Comment