Genre: Mystery

Review – Guardian, vol 2

Posted July 1, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Guardian, vol 2

Guardian

by Priest

Genres: Fantasy, Light Novels, Mystery, Romance
Pages: 341
Series: Guardian #2
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

THE SLEEPING GOD STIRS

As snow quietly covers Dragon City in the final days of the lunar year, patients writhing in pain flock to the hospital. Baffled doctors call upon Zhao Yunlan and his team for help. As the case unfolds, Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan discover that one of the Four Hallowed Artifacts, the Merit Brush, has appeared in the Mortal Realm. In the wrong hands, its power can be transformative.

While each step toward the artifact only pulls the pair deeper into a vortex of mysteries, Zhao Yunlan keeps stumbling upon a name: Kunlun. Who is Kunlun, and what is his connection to the Merit Brush? As Zhao Yunlan closes in on the answer, will he also uncover the truth behind Shen Wei's knowing gaze?

Book two of Priest’s Guardian gives us some major developments, both showing us who Zhao Yunlan really is and how he originally met Shen Wei, and getting into more detail on the bigger plot that’s bringing that to light. I must admit I probably need to skim the details again, but there’s a lot going on and a whole mythology here to figure out, but the way things are getting on is pretty intriguing.

We do get some more glimpses of the lives of the side characters Zhao Yunlan works with, and also of his family — his discussions with his parents about his sexuality and his relationship with Shen Wei are well done.

Aaaand we get some progression on the horrific pining, with Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan moving toward an openly romantic relationship, with lots more pining and chemistry off the charts. I can’t wait to see how they sort themselves out and properly commit to something, with Zhao Yunlan aware of the history between them. I hope they get a really happy ending, given the tragedy that seems to have befallen them in the past. Only one more book for everything to resolve, and I can’t quite see how it can all be wrapped up in that time!

I do still dislike the way Zhao Yunlan (and maybe others) consistently call Daqing “fatty” and stuff like that, though. Sure, he’s a cat yao, not a human, but he’s a speaking character. I know that culturally it can come across differently, but it doesn’t seem to be meant positively here, so that’s worth being aware of.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – The Last Escape

Posted June 26, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Last Escape

The Last Escape

by E.C.R. Lorac

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 152
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

In this final detective novel to feature Superintendent Robert MacDonald, we find the police officer setting up his retirement plans on a hill farm to the south of Lunesdale. Not quite ready to retire, he buys the farm and installs a young couple to oversee his property while he's away detecting. Meanwhile, one foggy morning Rory Macshane who has just finished his first year of a 10-year prison sentence at Dartmoor sees his plans for escape come to fruition. He has hidden away bits and pieces of this and that over the past year and when the fog begins to thicken while he out on a work-gang he takes advantage of it and disappears into the mist with enough gear to help him truly escape.

About a month after the prison break, MacDonald accompanies the farmer who has been renting the adjoining land on an tour of the abandoned farm house. There they find that someone is lying dead in the house. Is it murder or an accident?

The Last Escape is actually E.C.R. Lorac’s last Macdonald novel, featuring him in Lunesdale visiting the farm he’s purchased ready for his retirement. He’s recruited by a local farmer to be an unimpeachable witness to something that might be construed as dodgy, and of course, in the process they discover the corpse of a man and the local farmer is attacked.

It’s not much of a puzzle, mystery-wise. Macdonald quickly figures out how the man entered the locked farmhouse, and the motives are pretty clear, as well as the fact that it’s tangled up with the escape of a prisoner that we see at the start of the book. As often with Lorac, what matters is the landscape and the characters, with Macdonald showcasing his usual humanity.

There’s a bit of an odd final chapter in which Macdonald talks about some regret/reservation about the prison system, declaring that he’s not a reformer but confiding his doubts about how prisoners are treated by warders etc. His opinions will come as no surprise to those used to his character, at least those who are attentive and have read a few of the Macdonald books (given that the detective’s opinions may not matter much to those just casually reading a classic mystery), but it feels a bit tacked on.

It doesn’t quite feel like it should be the last: Macdonald’s thinking of retiring, and definitely looking back at his career a little, but he’s not there yet. But this is where we’re left… All in all, not one of the best, but I enjoyed myself anyway.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Puzzles of the Parish

Posted June 17, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Puzzles of the Parish

Puzzles of the Parish

by Martin Edwards (editor)

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Short Stories
Pages: 333
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

A pernicious parson outwits the thieves of a priceless chalice from the parish treasury. A beloved vicar contemplates a perfect crime when a blackmailer comes knocking. Poisoned pen letters lead to a fall from grace for a rector’s wife, and a suspicious fall from the second storey for the rector.

Gathered here in this new collection are some of the greatest mystery tales in which the tendrils of crime steal into the churchyard, featuring clergymen and nuns as victims, amateur sleuths and villainous perpetrators of the devil’s work. Replete with a fascinating introduction and notes from one of the guiding lights of crime fiction, Martin Edwards, this anthology delivers cosy brainteasers and fiendishly-fashioned stories with a sting in the tail, from a congregation of writers including Joyce Porter, H. C. Bailey, Cyril Hare and Edmund Crispin.

Puzzles of the Parish is the latest collection of short stories edited by Martin Edwards for the British Library Crime Classics series, and as usual it’s an interesting survey of short stories on the topic (churches, clergymen, etc), ordered from oldest to newest in a way that lets you see, if you’re interested, the way the genre was developing.

The authors represented include some of the usual suspects, of course. I did find that the selection of several quite modern stories raised my eyebrows a bit, honestly; I know it’s 2026 already, but a story published in 2006 is not a classic and I’m really not sure how it can be included… but this series has been tending this way a bit, perhaps by way of providing variety. There are plenty of genuine classics, though, and I wish they’d stick to them or admit the series has lost its purpose.

All that said, I found it an enjoyable collection. For me, there’s always a part of my mind looking at it in an academic sort of light, when it comes to classic mysteries, so there’s that level of entertainment for sure… but also there are genuinely interesting/fun stories here with interesting detectives/mysteries/culprits/scenarios. I had fun.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – The Unicorn Murders

Posted June 5, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Unicorn Murders

The Unicorn Murders

by Carter Dickson, John Dickson Carr

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 270
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

The diplomat Sir George Ramsden is returning to Britain from France with the mysterious “unicorn” in tow. The legendary thief Flamande has declared that he will be on the same flight as Ramsden, in disguise, and that the unicorn will be his. His arch-rival and head of the Sûreté Nationale, Gasquet, has assured the public that he too will be on the plane to thwart his nemesis. Meanwhile, holidaying in Paris, the ex-spy Kenwood Blake runs into Evelyn Cheyne and is swept into a perilous chase ending at the Chateau de l’Ile on a stormy night. Here, Ramsden’s plane has made an emergency landing, and Henry Merrivale has joined the party. When the castle is cut off by the flooding river, the stage is set for a battle of wits between two masters of disguise in Flamande and Gasquet, as a bizarre and seemingly impossible murder among the party casts suspicion in every direction – and the mystery of the unicorn is revealed. Carter Dickson’s brilliantly intricate mystery was first published in Britain in 1936; it remains a testament to his unique talent for wrangling audacious levels of devilishness into a masterpiece.

I’ve had a bit of a rocky time with John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson’s work — at some point things clicked and I started to enjoy it a bit more, but The Unicorn Hunters definitely encapsulates some of the things I really dislike about it. At times it doesn’t even seem to know what genre it wants to play in: spy thriller? spot of romance? murder mystery? gothic novel?

That is part of the fun if you can get on board, of course: it’s a bit overengineered, and it takes some work to keep up and follow Merrivale’s guesses (especially since you’re stuck in Kenneth Blake’s point of view), but it does feel like Carr was having fun referencing all these genres and setting up his twisty plots, and that helped to keep me in the game.

The romance part is mostly an aside, but there are a few moments where the story focuses on that… though, since Kenneth refers to the capable government agent Evelyn as “wench” and acts like she’s an irrational creature who will do anything for her man, that’s not always a good thing. (She seems fairly competent, actually.)

And I haven’t even mentioned the battle of wits between the brilliant detective (Gasquet) and the arch-criminal (Flamande)…

Once I got past the start, where I was annoyed by Kenneth lying in order to hang out with Evelyn, which was obviously going to lead to trouble, I managed to have fun — but I can’t say it’s a favourite, and this is on the lowish end of three stars.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – The Killing of a Chestnut Tree

Posted June 2, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 10 Comments

Review – The Killing of a Chestnut Tree

The Killing of a Chestnut Tree

by Oliver K. Langmead

Genres: Fantasy, Mystery, Romance
Pages: 176
Series: Havelock Harper Mysteries #1
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Be gay, solve crimes! The Killing of a Chestnut Tree introduces Havelock Harper, an all-new queer gentleman detective in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes, with a cozy, fantastical mystery.

Everyone in England knows Havelock Harper, the celebrated consulting detective, from the cases published in the papers. If any of them read his secret files, they would discover a very different man. His most fantastical cases must never reach the public eye, and nor must the love he shares with his stalwart companion, the formidable Major Sebastian Wright.

The Duke of Farleigh has been killed, and Havelock Harper summoned to the secluded Farleigh Forest to solve his murder. When he and Sebastian arrive, they discover a greater mystery. The trees of Farleigh have begun to speak, writing words into their leaves and bark. The victim is one of those trees: an ancient chestnut, cruelly chopped down.

Why has the forest begun to speak? Why would anyone cut down the Duke? And how can Farleigh’s gentle, quiet paradise survive this crime?

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I was instantly interested in Oliver K. Langmead’s The Killing of a Chestnut Tree from the description — a queer Sherlock Holmes pastiche in a fantasy world — so when I saw it come up for request I clicked instantly, and promptly settled down to read it at the first opportunity. I enjoyed the setting a lot: I think there’s a lot of worldbuilding still to come, because it’s not totally clear how much magic is normal/known in this world, what kinds of magic there are, etc… but since it’s a series, there’s plenty of time for that.

This first installment takes Havelock and Sebastian to Farleigh, a place with mysteries largely hidden from the outside world, in order to investigate the death of the Duke. Things naturally aren’t quite what they seem, starting with the nature of the death, and the two of them settle into Farleigh a little bit as they investigate the crime. We see them in the wake of an earlier case that’s just alluded to, a little unsure of where they stand with each other and missing the intimacy they used to have; it’s an established relationship, but also one which has to re-establish over the course of the story, which is a nice way in on understanding them as a couple.

Their story is wrapped in a frame story: Sebastian is writing out their cases (just as the Sherlock Holmes stories are written by Watson), but this one is being sent only to a young man who happened to consult Havelock for help with a certain mystery. These interludes are in second person, since they constitute Sebastian addressing the man in question, and they have their own small mystery (and part in the story). I wasn’t sure what the link was at first, so it was a nice “ahh” moment when I realised what Sebastian was doing.

The solution felt appropriately Holmesian — drawing together some disparate facts to present the full truth, leaving others stunned, but with enough there for the reader to make guesses of their own, and follow the solution given. I admit I hadn’t quite figured everything out, but I’m not sure I really tried: especially with fantasy mysteries (where I’m not always sure I know enough about the world to have a fair shot at the solution)Ă©, I often sit back and let it wash over me, rather than actively try to puzzle out whodunnit.

Definitely looking forward to more of this series!

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – The Great British Bump-Off

Posted May 30, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Great British Bump-Off

The Great British Bump-Off

by John Allison, Max Sarin, Jim Campbell, Sammy Borras

Genres: Crime, Graphic Novels, Mystery
Pages: 112
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

An Agatha Christie-style murder mystery set in the world of English competitive baking from Giant Days’ John Allison and Max Sarin.

When she enters her country’s most beloved baking competition, Shauna Wickle’s goal is to delight the judges, charm the nation, and make a few friends along the way. But when a fellow contestant is poisoned, it falls to her to apprehend the culprit while avoiding premature elimination from the UK Bakery Tent…and being the poisoner’s next victim!Collects issues #1–#4 of Dark Horse Comics series The Great British Bump-Off.

John Allison and Max Sarin’s The Great British Bump-Off is basically: what if someone was so desperate to win the Great British Bake-Off that they were prepared to kill their fellow competitors? And what if one of the competitors decided to try to solve what’s happening, while continuing to take part, and being super, super quirky?

It’s basically Agatha Christie meets the Great British Bake-Off, and it works pretty well as a bit of light fun. The art and character designs work well and create distinct characters, and it pokes a bit of fun at the baking competition show format.

It feels a bit rushed at the end, though I think that’s in part because it’s structured round the three standard challenges you get in the show, and in part because it wants to use that structure to gather the competitors/suspects around at the end and go round the room accusing people, Christie-style.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Guardian, vol 1

Posted May 26, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Guardian, vol 1

Guardian

by Priest

Genres: Fantasy, Light Novels, Mystery, Romance
Pages: 408
Series: Guardian #1
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Zhao Yunlan heads up a covert division of the Ministry of Public Security that deals with the strange and unusual, blurring the line between the mortal realm and the Netherworld. His cocky, casual attitude conceals both a sharp mind and an arsenal of mystical tools and arcane knowledge.

While investigating a gruesome death at a local university, Zhao Yunlan crosses paths with the reserved Professor Shen Wei. Zhao Yunlan is immediately intrigued by Shen Wei’s good looks and intense gaze, and the attraction between them is immediate and powerful, even as Shen Wei tries to keep his distance. Shen Wei and his secrets are a puzzle Zhao Yunlan feels compelled to solve as mysterious circumstances throw them together, and their connection becomes impossible to deny.


Wow, volume one of Priest’s Guardian certainly brings the yearning. I wasn’t entirely sure at first, since Zhao Yunlan’s mooning after Shen Wei seemed a little one-sided (though there were some hints), but after about halfway through it’s clear there’s more going on and that the yearning is more than mutual — if anything, Shen Wei is more deeply in love than Zhao Yunlan.

Shen Wei had been restraining himself for too long. In the perfect silence, he couldn’t help letting go for once. Lying there with Zhao Yunlan so tantalisingly near, his thoughts spun out of control. He imagined gathering that warm body close, pressing kisses to those eyes, that hair, those lips… tasting and partaking of every part.
He imagined possessing Zhao Yunlan utterly.
The fantasy alone was enough to make Shen Wei’s breathing unsteady. He yearned with the desperate fervour of someone dreaming of hot soup as they froze to death.
But he didn’t move a muscle. Just looking at Zhao Yunlan and thinking about him was seemingly enough.

Ooof. Wow.

The relationship between Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei is definitely a draw, but I’m enjoying the world and story as well: I figured out the identity of the Emissary ahead of time, but a lot of the details remain unclear, along with Zhao Yunlan’s last life, etc, and the various artefacts that Zhao Yunlan is presumably going to keep being drawn into encountering.

I will say that there’s a lot of stuff about Daqing (a cat) being really fat, calling him fatty, etc. The character isn’t solely comic relief and clearly has power of his own, and Zhao Yunlan insults everyone (especially Guo Changcheng, whose anxiety and awkwardness is frequently mocked), but… even the narrative gets in on calling Daqing fat all the time, and it’s definitely worth being aware of, as it’s clearly meant somewhat negatively/comically.

I’m definitely eager for the second book, in any case — I love Shen Wei, the yearning is palpable, and I’m curious where the story goes as well.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – The Murder at World’s End

Posted May 12, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 10 Comments

Review – The Murder at World’s End

The Murder at World's End

by Ross Montgomery

Genres: Crime, Historical Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 368
Series: A Stockingham & Pike Mystery #1
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Secrets, murder and mayhem collide as this unlikely sleuthing duo - an under-butler and a foul-mouthed octogerian - hunt a killer in a manor sealed against the end of the world.

Cornwall, 1910. On a remote tidal island, the Viscount of Tithe Hall is absorbed in feverish preparations for the apocalypse that he believes will accompany the passing of Halley's Comet. The Hall must be sealed from top to bottom - every window, chimney and keyhole closed off before night falls. But what the pompous, dishonest Viscount has failed to take into account is the danger that lies within... By morning, he will be dead in his sealed study, murdered by his own ancestral crossbow.

All eyes turn to Steven Pike, Tithe Hall's newest under-butler. Fresh out of Borstal for a crime he didn't commit, he is the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. His unlikely ally? Miss Decima Stockingham, the foul-mouthed, sharp as a tack, 80-year-old family matriarch. Fearless and unconventional, she relishes chaos and puzzles alike, and a murder is just the thrill she's been waiting for.

Together, this mismatched duo must navigate secret passages, buried grudges and rising terror to unmask the killer before it's too late...

I’m fairly picky about my mysteries, often preferring to stick to stuff like the British Library Crime Classics series, and shying away from a lot of the attempts to set stories in the same eras: they just don’t end up with the right feel. Nor does The Murder at World’s End, to be fair: I was very aware of reading a modern novel with modern sensibilities, and was weirdly most reminded of Robert Jackson Bennett’s Ana and Din (though Miss Decima is far more dismissive of Stephen than Ana is of Din).

Still, it did capture a certain amount of the fun of classic mystery types, with both a locked room and a closed circle element. I thought part of the solution was obvious very early on, and the problem was just figuring out the details — and I missed a big part of the final solution, actually.

I thought the bumbling detective was a bit overdone, though I was amused to read in the acknowledgements that many of the things he said were actually quotations from an actual policeman writing at the turn of the century, Hargrave L. Adam. Sometimes real people are goofier than fiction, I swear: it felt overdone and silly, in the context of the story. At times, it felt like the whole thing was going to devolve into slapstick.

That said, it maintained just enough tension, mystery and atmosphere to hold me, and I sped through it. I’d probably read another book in the series, though I’d like to see Miss Decima show a bit more respect to those around her, especially Stephen. She’s a fun character, a quick-minded older woman who relishes a mystery and to cause a bit of mayhem, but does have a softer side as well, regretting some of her past actions and acknowledging her faults. There’s some good room for growth there. Stephen was less of a stand-out, since he’s kind of hapless, though there’s plenty of room for him to grow as well.

Overall, I had a good time!

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – The Grendel Affair

Posted May 10, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Grendel Affair

The Grendel Affair

by Lisa Shearin

Genres: Fantasy, Mystery
Pages: 292
Series: SPI Files #1
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

We're Supernatural Protection & Investigations, known as SPI. Things that go bump in the night, the monsters you thought didn't exist? We battle them and keep you safe. But some supernatural baddies are just too big to contain, even for us...

When I moved to New York to become a world famous journalist, I never imagined that snagging a job at a seedy tabloid would change my career path from trashy reporter to undercover agent. I'm Makenna Fraser, a Seer for SPI. I can see through any disguise, shield, or spell that a paranormal pest can come up with. I track down creatures and my partner, Ian Byrne, takes them out.

Our cases are generally pretty routine, but a sickle-wielding serial killer has been prowling the city's subway tunnels. And the murderer's not human. The fiend in question, a descendant of Grendel--yes, that Grendel--shares his ancestor's hatred of parties, revelry, and drunkards. And with New Year's Eve in Times Square only two days away, we need to bag him quickly. Because if we don't find him--and the organization behind him--by midnight, our secret's out and everyone's time is up.

Lisa Shearin’s The Grendel Affair is a relatively typical urban fantasy sort of set-up, with much of the world unaware of magic and monsters, and others secretly working to keep that the case. The main character is a seer, working for a group run by a dragon and centered in New York, and the coolest thing about the book… is unfortunately spoilered by the title.

I’ve seen some reviews complaining about how useless Mac is, and I don’t think that’s entirely fair. She’s new to the job and not trained as a front-line agent, and though she’s definitely overconfident in the opening, she’s eager to learn and to listen to what those who are actually experts in the action say. She’s not the most useful combatant, but she does what she can, and she doesn’t shirk the danger when she is the right person for the job.

That said, I didn’t love her as a character either, mostly because I found her just kinda meh, a bit of a cipher. The same goes for pretty much all the characters, to be fair; Ian’s mostly just a cop stereotype who lost his partner etc etc. That’s partly because it’s the first book of a series and it needs time to grow, but it didn’t grab me.

Overall, it was fine, just not super exciting. I probably won’t read more.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – Murder at Gulls Nest

Posted April 26, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Murder at Gulls Nest

Murder at Gulls Nest

by Jess Kidd

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 336
Series: Nora Breen Investigates #1
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

The first in a sparkling new 1950s seaside mystery series, featuring sharp-eyed former nun Nora Breen.

Somewhere in the north, a religious community prepares for Vespers. Here on the southeast coast, Nora Breen prepares for braised liver and a dining room full of strangers.

Nora Breen arrives inconspicuously in the seaside town of Gore-on-Sea, and takes a room at the Gulls Nest guest house. Supper is at 6 o'clock sharp, and there will be no admittance after 9 - a routine Nora likes, as it reminds her of her former life as a nun.

As she settles in, she is careful not to reveal too much about herself to the other guests. Instinct tells her it's better to watch and listen. Because Nora is not here on a whim. She has a disappearance to investigate.

Before long, Nora realises that she may not be the only resident hiding something at Gulls Nest. To untangle the web of secrets and deceit, she'll need to do more than just observe. Does she have what it takes to stop a killer?

Jess Kidd’s Murder at Gulls Nest surprised me by being written in present tense; it’s not something you see a lot, and it didn’t always 100% work for me — I like it in short fiction, but I find it hard to sustain in my own writing, and at times I thought there was a strain here too. I also thought there were some very weird turns of phrase that felt like someone reaching for half-remembered words and applying them wrongly; the one I wrote down while reading was “pertaining to be [another person]”. I think Kidd needed ‘pretending’ here — or some other phrasing entirely.

As for the story itself, well: I enjoyed the choice of protagonist/amateur detective. Nora is an ex-nun who left her convent in order to discover what happened to another ex-nun who had left because of her health and suddenly stopped writing to Nora. She assumes foul play pretty much from the start, and it feels weird how reckless she is about the way she reveals her identity to some and not others. The narrative doesn’t even remark on that, there aren’t any consequences, which honestly makes it feel like the author’s oversight at times.

I found Nora in general to be a bit… inconsistent? I can understand that to a degree we’re seeing someone breaking out of a mould and learning who she is outside of the convent, but some of her actions feel erratic — like throwing her shoes at the duty sergeant, and letting herself being photographed dancing around wearing only a curtain — and I had trouble reconciling it all as believable variation in the behaviour of a single fully compos mentis person with control over her own actions, even though I’m certain we’re supposed to believe that she is.

The same applied to other characters too, and particularly Rideout, who seems to entirely lack professionalism. When other details felt grittily realistic, that kind of cavalier attitude to keeping civilians out of police work felt weird.

I think overall it all just… didn’t quite come together for me. It was entertaining, and the mystery hung together alright, but something was just a bit off in the narrative.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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