Detective Inspector Jon Spicer is working on Operation Fisherman, investigating a gang of car thieves, when he responds to a call for help from a Community Support Officer. A woman has been murdered and, because there is a prologue, we already know pretty much how, but we don't know why. And, despite the prologue, we don't know whodunit. As the first detective on the scene, Spicer (or 'Jon', as Simms prefers to call his leading man) is made Senior Investigating Officer – it seems a straightforward enough case. So far, so bog standard you might think.But when Jon gets home at the end of the day, things begin to take a turn for the slightly different. Jon is not an embittered alcoholic loner but a happily almost-married man. Instead of lighting up a cigarette, he chews a stick of gum. Instead of unscrewing the whisky bottle, Jon goes out for an after-work run with his pet boxer. He is career minded, but slightly concerned about being tied down by marriage and by the looming prospect of parenthood. It's Ian Rankin crossed with Nick Hornby.Over supper, Jon's partner Alice tells him some gossip about his friend Tom Benwell, whom he used to play rugby with (it was Tom who gave up; Jon still plays). Alice has heard that Tom's wife has walked out on him after he lost his job. By all accounts, Tom has become a complete wreck.The novel then follows Jon's investigation of the murders (for the first is rapidly followed by several more killings of young single women) in parallel to a series of extremely well-handled flashbacks showing why Tom lost his job and his wife, and cataloguing Tom's slow but terrible descent into psychotic mental illness.Killing the Beasts is the first of the Jon Spicer series of novels. It is set in Manchester at the time of the 2002 Commonwealth Games, and this is significant. Simms has created a great sense of place, but he has also shown how the glitz of the Games impacted on the city of Manchester and, especially, on Tom Benwell. Simms uses the metaphor of fireworks – the sudden shooting up to great heights, the spectacular display, the fall of the burnt-out case.I have to say I found the female characters too thinly drawn in an otherwise excellent novel. The men are complex, fully-rounded characters. All the women, on the other hand, are little more than victims or potential victims. The only almost-exception is Nikki the Crime Scene Manager who, despite making only brief appearances, seems less of a simple cipher than the rest of her sex. The flirty relationship between her and Jon is expertly handled and deftly introduces another narrative question – will they or won't they take the flirting one step further?I really enjoyed this book. I loved the main (male) characters. I loved the way Manchester was almost a character in its own right. I loved the depth to the story, and admired the skilful way Simm described the onset and development of Tom's illness. I enjoyed the way the author laid his false trails and red herrings. This is a book that works as an intricately plotted whodunit (the clues are all there) but also as a psychological mystery. And there's a breathless climax, too.
My second Chris Simms book, read out of order, as is my terrible habit.This one is set around the time of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, in 2002, a time and place I am very familiar with. He evokes the atmosphere and locations really well.The timeline of the book is different: it jumps between time periods, which helps to paint a more vivid picture of the characters and the events which overtake them.The story rolls along at a good pace, the characters are involving and the timeline jumps tie up the plot nicely. One or two elements felt a little forced, but taht didn't detract from the book overall.
What do You think about Killing The Beasts (2014)?
I think a big thing that influenced how much I enjoyed this book was the fact that I didn't realize the two plot threads were occurring at different periods of time until honestly over 2/3 of the way through the book. After that, things made a little more sense. However, even with that cleared up, I had some gripes with the book.- I didn't particularly like any of the characters. None of them really stuck out to me as good people. Some would say that this is realistic. I would argue that there are plenty of decent people in the world. It's hard for me to like a book if I can't root for or support anyone. I felt kind of ambivalent about the two main characters, Tom and Jon. At times I could genuinely sympathize with them and at times they were d-bags. Again, some would say that's realism. I would say that's big chunks of the book when I didn't give a rip what happened to them. You can have flawed characters without them being unlikable.ex. a character we're supposed to like drinking when she knows she's pregnant- Things took a long time to get going. This wasn't a huge issue since things picked up before it got unbearable, but I would have liked things to move along a little faster.- Tom's decline just seemed a little off to me. He just went from 0 to 60 extremely fast in my opinion. I think the circumstances were right, but I also think that things like that take some time to develop and don't just pop up all of a sudden. Also the whole Masters thing felt like a huge stretch to me. Idk maybe it's because I was never super sucked into the book.- THE FORMATTING. I was reading a Kindle version, so maybe there was some formatting error or something. But good gravy. Instead of characters talking like this:"What's for breakfast?" Sarah asked Tom."Just toast," he replied."Ugh."It was like this:'What's for breakfast?' Sarah asked Tom. 'Just toast,' he replied. 'Ugh.'It was incredibly annoying. Several times I got confused about who was saying what. And what happened to putting double quotation marks around speech?Ultimately I just think that this book wasn't my thing. However, I think I would have liked it more if it's formatting wasn't so bleeding awful and if the plot had moved along a little more.
—Elise
In the end, the overall story was three stars worth, but the moments of 'The Californians' sketch level obsession with Manchester roads and glut of shop names combined with the poorly edited pacing and weakly built out location jumps made the book, at times, aggravating to read. I found my eyes skimming quickly past paragraphs looking for story content at times. Credit should be given for the well done manner of giving multiple potential suspects without definitively revealing the who and why.DI Spicer was also a bit confusing to read as many of his speaking lines made him appear to be softer spoken and calmer before random outbursts supported by his supposed background rugby position made him seem like a bit of a rage monster (not helped by recent spotlighting of violence and police in recent news here, not the author's fault there). The resolution of the two primary cases tended to come from happenstance occurrences around the main character than actual brilliant police work. If not for the editing problems making the readings chore (and already being told by a friend that book 2 was not any better), I might be willing to read more. But I won't.
—Bob Woodyard
