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So I started out with this book as an audiobook, which did not do it any favors. The narrator made all his female characters sound vapid and whiny, and it realllly annoyed me. I did get to read about the last hundred pages or so after I gave up on the audiobook and checked the book out of the library.
I have not read the previous books in the series, so the proto-romance between Caffery and the police diver Flea wasn't really convincing. There was mostly talk of Caffery's limbic system going all male and protective and possessive of Flea, but until the last page of the book I didn't see any reciprocity from Flea at all. Flea's also about 20 years younger than Caffery, I believe, which didn't help my opinion of their relationship. I also couldn't agree with Caffery's act of concealing a vehicular homicide for 18 months because he knew Flea was involved somehow, to the point that the mother of the victim is following him around drunkenly and holding news conferences asking the police to do something to find her daughter. I couldn't get behind the shadiness and lack of ethics for no good reason (it turns out that Flea does have a reason for her behavior, but Caffery doesn't know that.)
Next, the setting. Our real protagonist is AJ (Average Joe, a derogatory nickname bestowed upon him that he's just gotten used to now) a director at a mental health facility for dangerous criminals. We never really see the dangerousness of any of these patients except to themselves, and procedures for the place just seem ludicrous. AJ himself has decided that he will not read the files of any of his patients in case he prejudices himself toward them, so has no idea what any of them are in for. This is so ridiculous to me- there's no way to treat a patient if you don't know their history, especially if the point is to eventually rehabilitate them. It's negligent and dangerous to AJ and to others around him. AJ gets involved with his boss, Melanie, and their relationship just grated on me too. At first AJ thinks of Melanie as an "ice queen" because she is professional, not because she's particularly abrupt or high-handed. Then, he realizes that she's just a woman after all, who can be cute and silly and insecure- what a revelation!! Of course, AJ is oblivious to a lot of things about Melanie, but he's pretty much oblivious to what every person around him is like, so this should be no surprise. Melanie is all about her job, and how difficult it is to be a woman in a man's world. Yes, it can be difficult, but it feels like a flashback to 1982, how this issue is harped on over and over again. Having females in management positions in the mental health profession should not be that big of a surprise at this point, considering the gender balance in the field in general.
I was never really creeped out by anything- I don't have a fear of dolls or dwarves sitting on my chest, and while the cases of self- harm we see are certainly horrific, they aren't explained well enough in the end for my satisfaction. It all felt a bit old-fashioned, the attempts at horror. The pace of the book is extremely slow- it takes 150 pages of a 300 page book for AJ to actually meet Caffery and get any investigation started.
So on to the end- I've marked this review for spoilers, right? Melanie ends up being some sort of criminal mastermind who somehow manages, in the middle of a mental health facility, to secretly manipulate dangerous criminals into harming themselves or even killing themselves, with no one on staff having any idea what's going on. Why? Because Melanie had a rough upbringing (all the backstory she gets is that she grew up in a rough part of town) and acts out when she's stressed or her boyfriends break up with her. Yes. It's the stereotypical man-eating female who has achieved power and uses it to manipulate and destroy others- watch out! The creepy guy who killed his parents and dismembered them and made creepy poppets resembling them when he was 14- the big red herring? He's just upset because he knows what Melanie is doing and has a big thing for justice. He makes poppets to represent people and how they should be punished, but except for killing his parents and running away from his halfway house after being let out (due to Melanie's machinations for some... reason) and buying the exact same tools that he used to mutilate and murder his parents, and watching creepily outside people's windows, the author ends up trying to paint him sympathetically.
Oh, and in the end the creepy serial killer guy turns out to have made poppets of AJ and of the nice earth mother type who makes jam (who has a random storyline in the book that takes forever to match up with the rest of the story) so that they will, by an amazing coincidence, meet each other just as the poppets are unearthed and realize that creepy serial killer guy sees them as his ideal mother and father, so clearly they are meant to be together. Talk about contrived. Talk about creepy. Talk about throwing AJ a bone of the perfect nurturing female just after he's escaped from man-eating Melanie. Ugh, ugh, ugh. I could not stand the way that females are portrayed in this book and it really surprises me that it's a female author who has written this.
I have not read the previous books in the series, so the proto-romance between Caffery and the police diver Flea wasn't really convincing. There was mostly talk of Caffery's limbic system going all male and protective and possessive of Flea, but until the last page of the book I didn't see any reciprocity from Flea at all. Flea's also about 20 years younger than Caffery, I believe, which didn't help my opinion of their relationship. I also couldn't agree with Caffery's act of concealing a vehicular homicide for 18 months because he knew Flea was involved somehow, to the point that the mother of the victim is following him around drunkenly and holding news conferences asking the police to do something to find her daughter. I couldn't get behind the shadiness and lack of ethics for no good reason (it turns out that Flea does have a reason for her behavior, but Caffery doesn't know that.)
Next, the setting. Our real protagonist is AJ (Average Joe, a derogatory nickname bestowed upon him that he's just gotten used to now) a director at a mental health facility for dangerous criminals. We never really see the dangerousness of any of these patients except to themselves, and procedures for the place just seem ludicrous. AJ himself has decided that he will not read the files of any of his patients in case he prejudices himself toward them, so has no idea what any of them are in for. This is so ridiculous to me- there's no way to treat a patient if you don't know their history, especially if the point is to eventually rehabilitate them. It's negligent and dangerous to AJ and to others around him. AJ gets involved with his boss, Melanie, and their relationship just grated on me too. At first AJ thinks of Melanie as an "ice queen" because she is professional, not because she's particularly abrupt or high-handed. Then, he realizes that she's just a woman after all, who can be cute and silly and insecure- what a revelation!! Of course, AJ is oblivious to a lot of things about Melanie, but he's pretty much oblivious to what every person around him is like, so this should be no surprise. Melanie is all about her job, and how difficult it is to be a woman in a man's world. Yes, it can be difficult, but it feels like a flashback to 1982, how this issue is harped on over and over again. Having females in management positions in the mental health profession should not be that big of a surprise at this point, considering the gender balance in the field in general.
I was never really creeped out by anything- I don't have a fear of dolls or dwarves sitting on my chest, and while the cases of self- harm we see are certainly horrific, they aren't explained well enough in the end for my satisfaction. It all felt a bit old-fashioned, the attempts at horror. The pace of the book is extremely slow- it takes 150 pages of a 300 page book for AJ to actually meet Caffery and get any investigation started.
So on to the end- I've marked this review for spoilers, right? Melanie ends up being some sort of criminal mastermind who somehow manages, in the middle of a mental health facility, to secretly manipulate dangerous criminals into harming themselves or even killing themselves, with no one on staff having any idea what's going on. Why? Because Melanie had a rough upbringing (all the backstory she gets is that she grew up in a rough part of town) and acts out when she's stressed or her boyfriends break up with her. Yes. It's the stereotypical man-eating female who has achieved power and uses it to manipulate and destroy others- watch out! The creepy guy who killed his parents and dismembered them and made creepy poppets resembling them when he was 14- the big red herring? He's just upset because he knows what Melanie is doing and has a big thing for justice. He makes poppets to represent people and how they should be punished, but except for killing his parents and running away from his halfway house after being let out (due to Melanie's machinations for some... reason) and buying the exact same tools that he used to mutilate and murder his parents, and watching creepily outside people's windows, the author ends up trying to paint him sympathetically.
Oh, and in the end the creepy serial killer guy turns out to have made poppets of AJ and of the nice earth mother type who makes jam (who has a random storyline in the book that takes forever to match up with the rest of the story) so that they will, by an amazing coincidence, meet each other just as the poppets are unearthed and realize that creepy serial killer guy sees them as his ideal mother and father, so clearly they are meant to be together. Talk about contrived. Talk about creepy. Talk about throwing AJ a bone of the perfect nurturing female just after he's escaped from man-eating Melanie. Ugh, ugh, ugh. I could not stand the way that females are portrayed in this book and it really surprises me that it's a female author who has written this.