I admit I did gulp when I started this book and discovered there were 608 pages. I don't often read books that long, and I wondered how a murder mystery could possibly span that number of pages without being too slow or laboured. It wasn't, not at all. This was 608 pages of sheer enjoyment. MacBride isn't an author I'm familiar with. And I really like him. He can tell a tale with (dark and Scottish) humour (I did laugh out loud many times), articulately and skilfully. There wasn't one single point where I started to think, 'oh hurry up, already!'
It features some rather gruesome murders by a serial killer…all to be solved by the Misfit Mob: members of the police force who end up in this team as a result of an (alleged) misdemeanour or two. But, what a wonderful cast: an array of strong characters, all intriguing, believable, imaginable and entertaining for one reason or another. If I'm honest, the tying up of a couple of threads was a teensy, weensy (but really teensy) bit beyond the bounds of credibility, but my enjoyment of the writing, the plot, character banter shadowed it.
I was slightly more irked by some poor editing: not just little oversights but some bad grammatical errors and an editor (or two) who missed the class on colons. But again, I can almost forgive that because this is a cracking, riveting thriller.
I've read books, not quite a long as this one, where I've thought, 'I don't want this to end!' But here, despite my, 'gosh, this is long' at the start, I ended up happy I was in it for the long haul.
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