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Jump to navigationJump to searchSkinner's Rules by Quintin Jardine (view source)
Revision as of 16:32, 2 August 2017
, 16:32, 2 August 2017no edit summary
By a third of the way through the book we have someone firmly in the picture for the murder and the case apparently closed. If the book had finished at this point you'd have been well-pleased by a darned good story, but Skinner's brain is tricked into life by a chance remark from girl friend Dr Sarah Grace and he realises that there's more - a lot more - to the case and that they've all been fooled. What follows is part police procedural and part thriller as Skinner works his way through the political machinations of Scotland's elite.
I'm in the unusual situation of having read the final books in the series - and deciding to go back to the beginning and fill in the gaps. I was prepared for disappointment - after all, I knew how a lot of Skinner's private life turned out, and this was the first in the series, a canter round the track before the horse got warmed up, so to speak. It didn't work out ''quite'' like that though. The plotting is proficient and better than say [[Knots & and Crosses by Ian Rankin|the first Inspector Rebus]] and the characterisation is good, although I did find the police team to be just a little too ''good''. On the other hand, many of them will feature in later books and it was interesting to see the early days of the relationship. As a series opener, it's a good one.
Rather than reading the book, I bought an audio download, narrated by James Bryce. I'm always nervous of audio books where the cast is likely to be heavy on one particular type of character - in this case it's middle-aged Scotsmen - as few narrators have the skill to sufficiently differentiate the voices, but I'd listened to [[Private Investigations (Bob Skinner) by Quintin Jardine|Private Investigations]] from the same series and also narrated by Bryce - I knew he was up to the job and he didn't disappoint.
