A review by mfraise05
Under Color of Law by Aaron Philip Clark

3.0

I am new to the police/detective mystery genre so I don't have any real insight into how this compares to anything else in the genre. That being said, I gave this three stars because it was well-written but could have been better. I was interested in the storyline; the narrator Detective Trevor Finnegan was interesting enough, and the whodunnit was enough to keep me reading. However, it read like an "edited for tv" version of what should have been a more fleshed out book. Maybe too much was cut by editors? Characters could have been given more development, things felt rushed when they didn't need to be, Finnegan was so freaking naive it was annoying - I grew increasingly irritated by his refusal to admit that the LAPD was(is) more bad than good and his insistence on excusing or defending shitty cop behavior with the tired "the job wears on you" excuse; and even though race is main factor in the storyline and Finnegan's experience as a cop, the author doesn't really dig deep into it, choosing to keep the racial experiences just at surface level. Also, Finnegan isn't super likeable. He doesn't treat anyone in the book particularly well, not his high school best friend/crush, not his father, not his lover; he acts like he's morally better than most of the rest of the department; and he's just generally unpleasant.
It looks like there's going to be more of this series but don't think I'll read them and if this is what cop mysteries are like, I'll skip those, too.