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Jump to navigationJump to searchAs Serious As Death (Primavera Blackstone Mystery) by Quintin Jardine (view source)
Revision as of 15:42, 3 February 2015
, 15:42, 3 February 2015no edit summary
He's in Spain to handle some sabotage problems which Weighley wants keeping out of the papers. Is it nothing more than vandalism, or are Catalan extremists involved? When a bomb explodes in Ricky's car the Spanish Special Branch seems suspiciously keen to write the matter off as an accident - leaking oil dripping onto an exhaust pipe, you know - but those who witnessed what happened know differently. It's not long before the body count is rising quickly and despite all her best intentions Primavera is involved.
I'm a fan of Quintin Jardine's [[Funeral Note: A Bob Skinner Mystery byQuintin by Quintin Jardine|Bob Skinner Mysteries]], not to the point of obsessively reading them all, but glad when one comes my way. It's a long time though since I read one of the Primavera Blackstone stories. They've never appealed to the same extent possibly because I find Jardine more convincing when he has a male lead - Primavera always seems to me to be a female man - but the series has been running for a few years now - we're at number five - and I thought I'd better see how it was turning out. (I'll confess too that I lean more towards the police procedural than to the thriller!)
Firstly, if you're looking for a read that pulls you in and keeps you there because you have to find out what happens next then this could be right up your street. You might have to suspend disbelief about Primavera and the life which seems to have been ''too'' packed with incident and drama - and continues to be - but you wouldn't have picked up the book unless you wanted a good story. The action starts quickly and it doesn't let up until you turn the final page. Characterisation is good, there's a real feel for the location and I really hadn't worked out who was behind the deaths until it was laid out on the page in front of me.
