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A review by sethlynch
The Late Greats by Nick Quantrill
5.0
This story has the traditional English detective novel as it’s backbone. There’s a limited pool of suspects – it isn’t a closed room so technically there are an unlimited amount of suspects, but Quantrill plays fair and doesn’t introduce any twin brother’s from Peru– and there is the detective, Geraghty, to solve the crime. We follow Geraghty around as he interviews suspects and finally resolves the case. I can get put off by books like this because I work out who did it very early on. The rest of the book from that point is seeing what extra smoke trails the author lays down. They also tend to have one-dimensional characters and every detail is either a direct clue or a red-herring.
I didn’t get put off reading this book: I got sucked in. Perhaps that was because I wasn’t totally concerned by who did it. The characters were well-developed and the unfolding story was engaging. The band’s manager, the journalist, the Hull gangsters, the cops, the band members – girlfriends wives and would have been wives, they were all convincing portrayals. And so the story of their interactions, their own motivations and lives, was as interesting as the solving of the mystery.
I didn’t get put off reading this book: I got sucked in. Perhaps that was because I wasn’t totally concerned by who did it. The characters were well-developed and the unfolding story was engaging. The band’s manager, the journalist, the Hull gangsters, the cops, the band members – girlfriends wives and would have been wives, they were all convincing portrayals. And so the story of their interactions, their own motivations and lives, was as interesting as the solving of the mystery.