Head Shot (Bob Skinner Mysteries) by Quintin Jardine

Head Shot (Bob Skinner Mysteries) by Quintin Jardine
Buy Head Shot (Bob Skinner Mysteries) by Quintin Jardine at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Crime
Reviewer: Sue Magee
Summary: Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner had to identify the strangled bodies of his parents-in-law who'd been murdered at their lakeside cottage in new York State. Being Skinner, he muscles in on the investigation. It's a little far fetched but a reasonable read.
Buy? Maybe	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 416/12h1m	Date: July 2002
Publisher: Headline
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 978-0747274476
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Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner was used to unpleasant scenes but nothing could have prepared him for having to identify the bodies of his parents-in-law who had been strangled at their lakeside cottage in New York State. And being Skinner he's incapable of not muscling in on the investigation. It's not long before he's established links with three other murders which are all too similar to be simply burglaries gone wrong. Then there are the possible links with a shooting more than half a century ago in Dallas. Can Skinner work his way through a case which has more layers than an onion and get to the truth?

I'm binge reading the earlier Skinner mysteries at the moment. This is number twelve (of twenty six as at July 2016) and for the first time I didn't really get caught up in the story as it just seemed to be a little bit too far fetched. Even as a visiting Deputy Chief Constable I couldn't imagine that an outsider would be allowed such access to an investigation, particularly one where there was a personal involvement and certainly not to effectively take it over as he did. I even got a little annoyed at the way that he always seemed to know more and be a better investigator than the locals. The explanation for what happened seemed to be just a little bit too neat and not really all that believable. I suspect that this is just a blip in the middle of a long-running series: I've read later books in the series and thoroughly enjoyed them so my fingers are tightly crossed.

I've been having problems with my vision, so rather than read the series I've been listening to audio downloads (which I've bought myself) narrated by James Bryce, who seems to have taken on the mammoth task of narrating all the Skinner books and turning a cast consisting mainly of middle-aged male Scots and middle-aged male Americans and giving them all individual personalities. That's no mean feat.

Quintin Jardine's Bob Skinner Novels in Chronological Order

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