Before I start this review, I happen to know the authors brother, but I
promise to give an honest review here.
“Two brutal killings rock Inverness, and bring ex-Met
Detective Inspector Lukas Mahler the biggest challenge of his career. The body
of the queen of daytime TV, Morven Murray is discovered by her sister, Anna, on
the morning of her wedding day. But does Anna know more about the murder than
she's letting on? Police informant Kevin Ramsay's murder looks like a
gangland-style execution. But what could he have stumbled into that was
dangerous enough to get him violently killed? Mahler has only a couple of weeks
to solve both cases while dealing with his mother's fragile mental health. But
caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, is ex-Met DI Lukas Mahler hunting one
killer, or two?”
The Shadow Man is well written whodunit from newcomer
Margaret Kirk. Much of its success lies within
an atmospheric setting, with believable, fully rounded characters and a narrative
that speeds it way through, dropping a few MacGuffins here and there to keep
the readers guessing. In many ways, the book felt like a well-established
series than the first of what could be multiple volumes.
With the tale set in Inverness, in the Highlands of
Scotland, we get a whodunit that does not reinvent the formula, but gives it an
interesting bent (though getting Val McDermid –known as the Queen of Scottish
crime thrillers- to give you a quote on the cover is certainly a great way to
start your career) that I found I liked. Mahler is flawed but likable Detective
Inspector, one who has returned home for family commitments, after spending
time in the “big city.” He has an intriguing past, which Kirk slowly delves out
as the hunt for a killer proceeds. While I was over half-way through the book
before I figured out who the killer was, I will admit that I appreciated the writers’
ability to send us off in a different direction, to make us think that the
killer is someone obvious. Not many authors who pen these whodunits these days take
the time to lead us astray like this. I also appreciated that detectives were able to piece the puzzle of who the killer was by detective work, and not through the killer making an obvious slip-up or leaving a crucial piece of evidence. Still, a lot of these thrillers do live at the corner of Convenience and Coincidence and while there some of that here, it's not that obvious.
Of course, as an American reading a Scottish written book,
and like a lot of British writers I’ve read over the years, some of the slang
and colloquialism is difficult to understand, but that should not distract a
reader (and I was amused that Kirk used the name of Dr. Galbraith early in the
book, which seemed a nod to Harry Potter writer JK Rowlings, who use a non de
plume of Robert Galbriath for her own series of mysteries. Whether that was unintentional, it made me smile). I also wonder if Kirk
will bring her detective Mahler (and right-hand man Fergie) to San Diego in
future novels, as this is where her brother lives. It would be fun to see that!
After three whodunits in a row –and three mystery novels
where the main character has a nemesis that is not part of the central
narrative but is the thorn in the detectives sides- I’m going to back to my
beloved science fiction (though Rowling just released the fourth book in her Cormoran Strike series, so I'm bound to pick that up). But I think that Kirk has written a fine novel, one that
is dark and bitter, full of interesting and flawed heroes. I look forward to
her next one.
No comments:
Post a Comment