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3.47 AVERAGE
3.47 AVERAGE
I've been happily reading the Anna Travis series by Lynda La Plante since the first book and enjoying them. Despite a few odds and ends that can be mildly annoying. Ongoing romantic angst, a tricky senior officer (in this case the early on love interest as well), and some seriously big books without always having quite enough story to fill out all of the pages.
BLIND FURY, unfortunately, nearly defeated me before the end. Which is a pity. Because the investigative elements of this book are actually not too bad. It does take a while for things to get moving mind you - but it's an interesting sort of a case, with the bodies of two young unidentified girls and an identified older prostitute seemingly having little in common. Aside from the circumstances of the dumping of their corpses, and the way in which they were raped and killed. Identifying the victims requires a lot of good old fashioned police investigative work - a lot of which is done by the team that Anna is working with - with flashes of insight from Anna herself. At the same time, for reasons best known to DCS Langton, Anna and a colleague also find themselves visiting a maximum security jail to discuss the case with a previously convicted multiple murderer who claims he has a unique insight into the mindset of this new killer.
Langton and Anna have a romantic history (they lived together at one point) and both have moved on. A while ago. It is mentioned, not quite as frequently as in earlier books, and it's sort of spiced up a little with some vaguely longing behaviour from Langton which seems to cause Anna to realise, frequently, that she's moved on. Moved on to the point where she forms a relationship with one of the guards on the unit where killer Cameron Welsh is held. And at this point the personal elements of the story start declaring themselves in bold face letters, with a little neon decoration for good measure.
BLIND FURY heads off into unbelievable territory fairly quickly - with the unfathomable concentration on an unconnected, unqualified, convicted killer as some sort of "expert" witness in the case. Which didn't stack up well on it's own, let alone when you also have to accept some of the leaps of brilliance or "intuition" elements of the normal Anna investigation style. Normally this sort of thing is a little easier to swallow as previous books have belted along at a good pace, but this one dragged. As the focus is increasingly on Anna and her personal life, the concentration on the actual investigation wanes - and that got really annoying, as the process of identifying the two unknown girls, connecting them to the dead prostitute and then the painstaking work required to try to identify suspects was reasonably compelling. Or at least it felt so stacked up beside the inevitability of the trainwreck that is Anna's personal life.
Overall there just wasn't enough of the good elements to hide or compensate for the increasingly sinking feeling of inevitability that hit as soon as a new man walked into Anna's life and the book dragged on to its foreseeable and really disappointing conclusion.
BLIND FURY, unfortunately, nearly defeated me before the end. Which is a pity. Because the investigative elements of this book are actually not too bad. It does take a while for things to get moving mind you - but it's an interesting sort of a case, with the bodies of two young unidentified girls and an identified older prostitute seemingly having little in common. Aside from the circumstances of the dumping of their corpses, and the way in which they were raped and killed. Identifying the victims requires a lot of good old fashioned police investigative work - a lot of which is done by the team that Anna is working with - with flashes of insight from Anna herself. At the same time, for reasons best known to DCS Langton, Anna and a colleague also find themselves visiting a maximum security jail to discuss the case with a previously convicted multiple murderer who claims he has a unique insight into the mindset of this new killer.
Langton and Anna have a romantic history (they lived together at one point) and both have moved on. A while ago. It is mentioned, not quite as frequently as in earlier books, and it's sort of spiced up a little with some vaguely longing behaviour from Langton which seems to cause Anna to realise, frequently, that she's moved on. Moved on to the point where she forms a relationship with one of the guards on the unit where killer Cameron Welsh is held. And at this point the personal elements of the story start declaring themselves in bold face letters, with a little neon decoration for good measure.
BLIND FURY heads off into unbelievable territory fairly quickly - with the unfathomable concentration on an unconnected, unqualified, convicted killer as some sort of "expert" witness in the case. Which didn't stack up well on it's own, let alone when you also have to accept some of the leaps of brilliance or "intuition" elements of the normal Anna investigation style. Normally this sort of thing is a little easier to swallow as previous books have belted along at a good pace, but this one dragged. As the focus is increasingly on Anna and her personal life, the concentration on the actual investigation wanes - and that got really annoying, as the process of identifying the two unknown girls, connecting them to the dead prostitute and then the painstaking work required to try to identify suspects was reasonably compelling. Or at least it felt so stacked up beside the inevitability of the trainwreck that is Anna's personal life.
Overall there just wasn't enough of the good elements to hide or compensate for the increasingly sinking feeling of inevitability that hit as soon as a new man walked into Anna's life and the book dragged on to its foreseeable and really disappointing conclusion.
was really surprised with how much i enjoyed this book!
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was a great 6th book in the series. While i worked out who the killer was early on, it was great following the team as they investigated the killings. Anna was fantastic and managed to work better with the team as well as coming up with a lot of the main leads.
If, in the field of crime novels, one distinguishes between sub-genres like whodunits and police procedurals, this book definitely falls into the latter category. Whodunits usually have lots of suspects, and the search is to find which one committed the crime. In this book, however, the emphasis is on how the police go about gathering evidence, first of all to charge, and then to convict a suspect.
In this story a young woman is murdered, and her body is dumped beside a motorway. It seems similar to some earlier cold cases, and the police try to find whether the same person committed all the crimes. There are no real surprises in the story, and much spaces is taken up by the police reinterviewing witnesses who did not give full information the first time they were interviewed. It all gets a bit tedious after a while, and the book (at 501 pages) is about 200 pages too long.
In this story a young woman is murdered, and her body is dumped beside a motorway. It seems similar to some earlier cold cases, and the police try to find whether the same person committed all the crimes. There are no real surprises in the story, and much spaces is taken up by the police reinterviewing witnesses who did not give full information the first time they were interviewed. It all gets a bit tedious after a while, and the book (at 501 pages) is about 200 pages too long.
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Longer than it needed to be. Kept reading as I was waiting for some kind of twist or revelation but was disappointed. The only major thing that happened was also predictable.
Content Warnings
Author seemed to want reader to have little sympathy with one character simply because she was fat. went so far as to suggest it drove her partner to commit murder Really laboured the point and it was very uncomfortable to read.
I must say that I don’t take a lot of notice of the titles of Lynda La Plante’s DI Anna Travis novels, as I don’t think they usually relate to the actual novel. I suppose this book (the latest in the series) does, but you wouldn’t make the link until the end.
This book is about another murder case that DI Travis is working on, the murder of three women whose bodies were all found just off a London motorway. It’s a dead case with very few leads. Enter a murderer in gaol who specifically states he can assist the case and get into the killer’s mind. An interesting plot line that makes you think of The Silence of the Lambs but it really doesn’t go very far, except for setting up another lover for Anna.
I’m getting a bit sick of Anna and her boyfriends- yes, she’s very morally upright and dedicated to her career, so how does having a fling in each book assist the plot? Isn’t it in detective fiction canon that all detectives end up sad and lonely?
This is a spoiler but Anna doesn’t break the mould. In what must be the most boring case covered in this series, leads continually come to dead ends and suspects / witnesses are revisited again and again. This is fiction- couldn’t there be a bit more liberty to make it interesting?
The last couple of chapters go through emotions and timeframes very quickly- a little too quickly in my opinion. The blurb on the back of the book also says a little too much about what happens at the end- I had a chapter to read, read the blurb again and immediately thought, ‘Oh, I know what happens now’.
Generally with this series I don’t expect high literature but gripping action. This time I didn’t even get one of them.
This book is about another murder case that DI Travis is working on, the murder of three women whose bodies were all found just off a London motorway. It’s a dead case with very few leads. Enter a murderer in gaol who specifically states he can assist the case and get into the killer’s mind. An interesting plot line that makes you think of The Silence of the Lambs but it really doesn’t go very far, except for setting up another lover for Anna.
I’m getting a bit sick of Anna and her boyfriends- yes, she’s very morally upright and dedicated to her career, so how does having a fling in each book assist the plot? Isn’t it in detective fiction canon that all detectives end up sad and lonely?
This is a spoiler but Anna doesn’t break the mould. In what must be the most boring case covered in this series, leads continually come to dead ends and suspects / witnesses are revisited again and again. This is fiction- couldn’t there be a bit more liberty to make it interesting?
The last couple of chapters go through emotions and timeframes very quickly- a little too quickly in my opinion. The blurb on the back of the book also says a little too much about what happens at the end- I had a chapter to read, read the blurb again and immediately thought, ‘Oh, I know what happens now’.
Generally with this series I don’t expect high literature but gripping action. This time I didn’t even get one of them.
An interesting mystery. Took a long time to work thru all the details before finding the killer. Didn't like Anna having to go to the jail and visit the crook who wanted to give them details. It was creepy and he was very manipulative and didn't really help them. The fact that the crook killed Anna boyfriend in the end was awful. Felt so bad for her. Her big boss, James Langdon, is an interesting character. He likes having control over everyone and reacts to Anna's engagement in a very controlling way. Glad they got the killer of the Polish ladies in the end.
Nice read - enjoyed this more than the previous. Tragic ending. Still lots of details that seemed unnecessary to the plat and made this lengthy. But well developed and close to the Prime Suspect books.
"To catch a killer they will have to trust another" seems a little misleading. In actual fact it should read, "There's a bit of a previous killer playing games with no actual result or merit or even impact to truly spur the plot along, a lot of driving around doing nothing, the main character being an arse with a whirlwind romance destined for tragedy and an unconvincing killer".
But perhaps that's a little bit long for the front of the book.
But perhaps that's a little bit long for the front of the book.