Reviews

The Jigsaw Man by Nadine Matheson

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wishknots's review against another edition

1.0

Awful, boring police procedural with every bad trope you could think of thrown in. Plus, the detective is gaslighting her husband and acting like the victim when she is sleeping with her boss. I hated it.

tbailey23's review

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adventurous dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

saadiyya_reads786's review against another edition

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4.0

Looking forward to the next book in the series.

paulabrandon's review against another edition

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3.0

Inspector Anjelica Henley is still scarred by her near-death experience with Peter Olivier, a serial killer known as the Jigsaw Man (no, he doesn't devise traps for his victims), when she captured him. Two years later, murders are committed that are just like Olivier's crimes, but he's in prison. While Henley and her team are certain it's a copycat and that they haven't imprisoned the wrong man, they must figure out if Henley is pulling the strings from within his cell, or if it's a new killer acting alone. Which means Anjelica must face Olivier again.

Another serial killer thriller that is more police procedural. Although, thankfully, many of the subgenre's tropes are downplayed. While there is some mention of the media, there are no pesky or vindictive journalists to be found, normally a trope that drives me up the wall. There is a supervisor who wants to pull the squad off the case, but it doesn't take up a lot of time. No ambitious colleagues seeking to one-up the main detective. No long life histories of characters who exist simply to discover a dead body. So I was very happy about all of that.

However, despite those pluses, there is absolutely nothing new to be found here. It's yet another serial killer book in which the author seems to think the killer is much more interesting than he actually is. We keep getting told how charismatic and manipulative Peter Olivier is, but I never got that sense from him on the page itself through how he spoke or acted. The book jacket comes with a lot of comparisons to "The Silence Of The Lambs", and I don't know what that achieves. It has been more than 30 years since "The Silence Of The Lambs" was released. There have been hundreds upon hundreds of renditions of that same plot since then, and this book doesn't offer up any new twists on the theme whatsoever.

Main character Anjelica is hard to like. I suppose she's supposed to be edgy, and thankfully doesn't come with a ridiculous haunted backstory like the protagonist of M.J. Arlidge's books, but why am I rooting for her? She's bitter. She's nasty to everybody around her, particularly the trainee she's supervising. She puts her job before her family, despite saying she doesn't. She cheats on her husband. All in all, she's awful!

The pacing is sluggish. Every time we get a new development, possibly an exciting one, the book dies in the ass again as we get a lot of technical detail about, for example, connecting a phone account to a bank account, or something like that. This is a problem that crops up all the time in a police procedural. Authors want the story to be authentic and as close to real life as possible. Police investigations are long-winded, tedious and full of dead ends. But that's not what I want my fiction to be! I mean, really! I don't mind the author taking some liberties in order to keep proceedings punchy and interesting.

There are strands left dangling at the end of the book. Not my cup of tea. The author says on Goodreads she's writing the sequel. Although this was better than a lot of police procedurals I've read, I don't think it brings anything near fresh and original enough to the table for me to give a second story a go.

damarareads's review against another edition

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4.0

3.5. It was a fun time and the characters were cool. But, I thought it was a little convenient for both of the serial killers to die. But I liked Peter but didn't understand Pine's MO. Still fun though!

clotalksbooks's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No

3.5

A good, twisty story, but the narration wasn't for me. I struggled, but did get more into it the further I got and the story captured me enough to override my disappointment with the narrator. There were quite a lot of characters, so I also got a bit confused at times - this is also something that may have been easier in print. Overall a good book that may be worth another go in print.

zenzi2read's review

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dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

This book needs more character development. Most of the second half plots and deaths are because of her and that needs to be examined. There were so many characters in this book, but they were all underdeveloped. I also felt like her personal relationships took up so many pages, but they revealed very little about her. Although this is a police procedural, there was very little police work happening during the first half of the book which is a shame. They rushed to speak to the imprison serial killer and it was unnecessary.

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