This book has been sitting on my shelf for quite sometime. I don't know why I strayed away from the series, I really liked the first one. I did though but lately I have been on a Scotland and Ireland mystery binge so I went and grabbed it up. There isn't anything groundbreaking in the story but I didn't care. It checked all the boxes for a fun summer read. Plus, I am a sucker for Scotland mysteries. I will be back to this series much faster than last time. ( )

Dying Light
1 Star (DNF)

Unfortunately, this is a very poor follow up to a promising debut.

The build up to the various mysteries proceeds at a snail's pace, and the protagonist, DS Logan McRae, who has such potential in the first book, spends most of hist time complaining about his commanding officer and whining about his girlfriend.

In addition, there is a nasty undercurrent of misogynism in the way the female characters are portrayed, and there is an excessive amount of profanity. I usually don't mind the occasional swear word, especially in police procedurals, but hardly a sentence is uttered without someone swearing or cursing.

Finally, the best murder mysteries are ones in which the reader cares about the victims an/or the investigators and/or is interested in the twists and revelations. Sadly, none of these are compelling enough to warrant continuing with the book. I simply could not care less and there are better books waiting on my TBR. ( )

This second book in the series was a lot like the first - lots of characters, brutal action, constant murders (seemingly), etc. The bad guys are very bad, and the good guys are better, usually. There were one or two scenes that were a bit over-the-top in brutality, so if you don't like brutal violence, you may need your blinders in some parts. I had trouble even imagining what they did, which perhaps made it easier.

There are a lot of interesting characters, and it's not easy keeping up with who's who, although I remember some from the first book. I plan to continue reading a few more while I can still remember some of them.

I was a bit disappointed near the end when McRae made what I thought was a stupid mistake. He and his partner were expecting trouble at his former girlfriend's house, it was a suspicious situation when he got there, and his old girlfriend seemed strange, and said a few things that were very odd, yet he simply dismissed it and entered the house without any caution. And on top of that, I was screaming at him to be careful, but he ignored me. No wonder his team keeps getting murdered!

I was also disappointed in the ending, which we never got to hear about. These two things contributed to my less than stellar rating. ( )

Den gjennomførte kanskje ironien har en fremmedgjørende effekt. Du VET at du leser en krimroman. Typene er enkelt tegnet, levd og opplevd. Det er nesten på nivå med person-beskrivelsen i Hardy-bøkene - med motsatt fortegn. Steel kan umulig forefinnes og de som er hennes underordnede må drive med rasjonalisering og eskapisme i utstrakt grad. Alt i boken er en slag drit-og-dra, men plottet er ganske fiffig og Logans teft uovertruffen. Oppsummert er typene i fortellingen rene karikaturer, dvs veldig enkle sjeler uten noe annet enn drift igjen.

Detective Sergeant Logan McRae has been reassigned to D.I. Steels “ screw-up Squad” after a sting operation went wrong and a police officer got hurt badly. Now he must prove that he isn't a screw-up so that he can go back to work with his old group instead of D.I. Steels. But in Aberdeen crime never sleeps and soon he is working on different cases; arson, prostitutes getting murdered and a dead dog in a suitcase.

I found this book not as intense as the first one in the series, it was good, no doubt about it and I loved that Logan now had to work with Steel, but the cases just really never got that interesting. I mean when I was writing about what happened in the book, about the murder of the prostitutes did I have to think for a moment to remember who the killer was. And, I had some problems with the main suspect of the suitcase murders,

the person in question that the police arrest just didn't seem to be capable of planning a killing so it just felt natural when Logan got the right killer towards the end.

But I still enjoyed the book. It's well written, and the most interesting part of the book was, the one part that I felt most anxious about was

Colin Millers abduction and the wait to know what happened to him.

And yes I blamed Logan for that. He should have known that he put Miller in danger. Also, Steel is such a great character, sure she can be a bit brash sometimes, well always, but it's really refreshing to have someone being so vulgar sometimes. ( )