Aftershock (Bob Skinner Mysteries) by Quintin Jardine

Aftershock (Bob Skinner Mysteries) by Quintin Jardine
Buy Aftershock (Bob Skinner Mysteries) by Quintin Jardine at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Crime
Reviewer: Sue Magee
Summary: Book 18 of the series is a good police procedural read but if you're intending to read book 17 at any point you should really read that book first or much of your enjoyment will be spoiled!
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 448/13h17m	Date: May 2008
Publisher: Headline
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 978-0755329120
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During the second week of the July Edinburgh Trades Holiday there was a call to the Edinburgh CID informing them that the body of a young woman had been discovered on a local golf course. It turned out that it had been there for ten days and was just as you might expect. There's a major problem though: the way that the body is laid out is familiar: in fact it's exactly the same as the bodies of the three young women in a recent case. Only that case was settled: the murdered had killed himself and the discovery of his body led to the death of a much-loved colleague of the CID officers.

The obvious thought is that it's the work of a copycat killer, but who could have known some of the details? Only a very few people would have known all the facts - except some of the Crown Agent staff have not been as tight-lipped as they should have been. It's not long before it becomes obvious that a serial killer is at large. This time the victim was an art teacher who was having a relationship with the son of a Tory MP, but to complicate matters further her ex-boyfriend is a serving policeman with a reputation as a womaniser. Then it seems obvious that all the clues lead back to one person: Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner.

You could read this book without having read the previous book in the series, but if you're intending to read it at any point you should really read that one first: shouting at a book that they might think they've got it settled but they've got it completely wrong is not a good look. The cynical might say that it's a good way of getting two books out of what's essentially one plot, but they're both good, satisfying reads and there's no danger of you feeling short changed.

It ' getting difficult to follow the who's who of the police personnel. Many of them have been there since the beginning of the series and they're now all of senior rank and still get involved in the nitty gritty of policing but it's difficult to keep track of who's married to who now and who they used to be married to or having a relationship with: it's almost as though it's a remote tribe with a limited choice of mate rather than a big city. If you can't keep track, just go with the flow and it all sorts itself out eventually! In fact you might even compare it to buses: if you miss one relationship another will be along shortly.

Because of a vision problem I've been restricting the amount of reading that I do and I've listened to the Skinner books as audio downloads, all of which I've bought myself. They're narrated by James Bryce who's nobly taken on the task of telling a story which is heavily populated by middle-aged, middle class Scotsmen and somehow giving them all individual voices - and that is no mean feat. As soon as I finish one, I buy the next download!

Quintin Jardine's Bob Skinner Novels in Chronological Order

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You can read more book reviews or buy Aftershock (Bob Skinner Mysteries) by Quintin Jardine at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Aftershock (Bob Skinner Mysteries) by Quintin Jardine at Amazon.com.

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