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Read Looking Good Dead (2007)

Looking Good Dead (2007)

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Series
Rating
4.05 of 5 Votes: 5
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ISBN
0786716428 (ISBN13: 9780786716425)
Language
English
Publisher
carroll & graf

Looking Good Dead (2007) - Plot & Excerpts

Spoilers AheadHad this novel been less than 150 pages I could have given it three stars but at 336 pages it’s simply horrible. There is so little “story” to this story that it could have been squeezed into a short story or a novella at best. This is quite possibly the worst-paced “thriller” I’ve ever made it through. If you edited out all of the superfluous trivia you could have read the whole thing in 45 minutes.Here is the story. A regular Joe finds a DVD on commuter train that gives the user access to a snuff flick website. His computer is almost immediately hacked by the nefarious snuff flickers and they threaten his life if he goes to the police. This is about all that happens for over half of the book with the pages being filled with the mundane and highly tedious details of regular Joe’s family life and his horrible wife who is a compulsive eBay shopper. She seems like a complete moron although her husband remarks at one point that she has a lot of wisdom.The police inspector Roy Grace is an equally tedious individual. There is absolutely no indication that he is any good at his job and the rest of his colleagues seem just as dull. At one point regular Joe’s wife is abducted by the snuff slickers but instead of getting to the fucking point and telling us just what is happening to her we are taken on a rambling and completely idiotic stream-of-consciousness that tells us that Grace’s dad liked to build toy boats, that he has a Mars bar and coffee for breakfast, that Norman Potting is dressed well, and something about someone’s kid being taken to the zoo. Instead of copying and pasting some doggerel from the book I’ll just write a pastiche.The police arrive to ask a man about where the killers may be hiding. He asks them if they would like something to drink. He offers them tea but he also has coffee. Or perhaps they would prefer a soft drink? How about some biscuits? Would they care for biscuits? I wish that I had a nickel for every time I screamed out loud while reading some stupid bit of trivia, “Why the fuck do I care about this?” There is almost nothing to this book. It begins with a horrible snuff flick although there is no sex involved which seems highly unlikely. I seriously doubt that in this day and age of special effects that there is much call for actually killing someone in a movie meant for sick perverts. We learn almost nothing about this sinister world because so much of the book was dedicated to giving the most tedious details of the lives of regular Joe and family, Roy Grace, and a couple other members of the department.The whole plot device of the family being kidnapped is stupid and doesn't make a lick of sense. Why in the world would the snuff flickers go after regular Joe? After he had gone to the police they had nothing left to gain and everything to lose.And how many times did they mention regular Joe's wife and her vodka problem? she's in the hands of snuff flickers who are about to cut her up like a fresh fish and he's worried about her drinking? This was beyond stupid.

I don’t easily get creeped out by books these days. Not any more. Not since Stephen King’s It permanently damaged me as a child, when I was reading it under the bedcovers late at night, torch in one jittery hand, twice frightened that my mother would catch me in the forbidden act of reading “that author with evil in his head.”Did you know, momma, what was in mine?So it’s been a while that I got the willies from a book, which makes me very glad that I picked up a copy of Peter James’s Looking Good Dead. It’s a brilliant thriller. Here’s why.Tom Bryce, a regular Joe salesman, is sitting on the train from London to Brighton thinking about his wife and kids. And like anyone who’s ever had a standard class fair, he’s stranded next to a right prick yelling into his mobile phone. So when the guy gets off the train and leaves a CD behind, Tom’s not exactly in the mood to play Good Samaritan.This is where we all collectively yell, “Why oh why, Tom, did ya have to take the CD home?”That night our dear friend Tom watches a snuff movie. Then his computer is hacked and before long he’s running scared and fighting for the life of his wife and kids. Never mind his own.At the same time, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is called out to a gruesome discovery in a field on the same day that he’s got a hot date lined up. But what he finds out there opens up old wounds; his own wife disappeared many years ago, and since then he’s forever been wondering what happened to her and blaming himself.This is a superb thriller in every sense of the word. Peter James drops us right into the households of every day people. He shows us that they also read the Gruffalo to their kids, watch the Simpsons, and then he tears them to shreds, and we’re left wondering exactly who this bastard is. James also has a great sense of place, constantly feeding us information about Brighton without overpowering us with needless description. In fact, everything about his writing is precise and to the point. He is as efficient a writer as he is a killer of characters, is Mr James.I wish I could stop with the laurels there, but his research and deep understanding of the Brighton Metropolitan Police shines through, especially in his treatment of cyber crime and modern technologies. Here’s another great detail: I love looking out for how authors tie their novels back to the titles. In Peter James’s case, when the words “Looking Good Dead” are spoken, you don’t know if you want to laugh or slam the book shut and run.A well-rounded novel this: great characters, great plotting, and a story that could become all too real. I’m going to commit sacrilege in the crime-reading world and say I enjoyed this book more than Michael Connelly’s The Poet,Just do me a favour: don’t read this under the bedcovers with a torch.

What do You think about Looking Good Dead (2007)?

Having discovered two copies of this book on my bookshelf I figured it may be a good idea to read one of them! I have come to the Roy Grace series by Peter James a book late apparently, this being the second in the series although Looking Good Dead seems a perfectly good stand alone read, as the references to DS Grace's marriage and disappeared wife are referred to enough times throughout to know his background. Even though I did kind of enjoy this book, a have a lot of gripes about it as well. The first being (view spoiler)[ is it just me or is it about time that writers come up with something else apart from the 'meaningful object/clue' being inserted into any one of a number of the bodies orifice's to be discovered during the autopsy of victim??? It seems that it has got to the stage that everyone is trying to outdo themselves with the goriest or nastiest descriptions possible and I think enough is enough, surely - there is no shock value with it as it has been done to death (pardon the pun) (hide spoiler)]
—Sharon

I got this book recommended by a friend and I have quite enjoyed it, but after his previous recommendations, I have to admit, my expectations were greater.Basically, a man finds a CD on a train, puts it in a computer at home to see if he can find who it belongs to and return it, and then all hell breaks loose – murder, threats, another murder and more threats. But to make things worse, people actually pay to watch these murders live on the internet. Every second is important for DS Grace to prevent more deaths.The book is good, but not amazing. Thumbs up for the plot, which I found original and well-handled and, surprisingly, not as unbelievable as I would’ve thought. The beginning is a bit slow and the end, in turn, comes and goes in a few dozen pages, but I suppose that is kind of common practice to increase the tension in the crucial moments anyway.I thought DS Grace’s interest in occultism was an interesting touch as that, for me, was new in a character of a police investigator, quite surprising and unusual distinguishing detail.However, in general, I am not very fond of James’s characters. Somehow, they seem to lack enough depth to feel real, to make you empathise with them, or to make you think of them as actual people, rather than characters in a book. Most of them seem to have a leading characteristic that overshadows other personal features and pretty much determines the character. Also, I was a bit disappointed with the stereotyped villains.To mention one more cliché, everything just happens to happen at the right time, that is, the last possible second. At the last possible second you find the location you are looking for, at the last possible second you leave the danger… Some parts just seem to be a tiny bit too far-fetched.On the same note, some things seem to happen just for the sake of the storyline. By this I mean that they just appear out of a sudden when they are needed and they are immediately dropped after they’ve played their role, although some of them felt like they needed more explaining or being followed further.At the same time, I have to contradict myself, because some of these aspects that seem to be dropped too suddenly or to be just a little bit too convenient, come up again in the end and turn out to be something else than what they first looked like. Basically, the errors of the investigators. And this, in turn, I appreciated, as I am a bit tired of the superhero detectives who know it all from the start and are never wrong. I thought this made DS Grace more human.All in all, despite a few minor let downs, I did enjoy this book. In the end, I found myself unable to stop reading and just had to finish the book, although that meant depriving myself of several hours of sleep. So would I recommend it? Yes, it is worth the read.
—Misha

Tom Bryce finds a CD on a train and inserts it into his laptop. Then the trouble starts and Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is on the trail to solve a murder and more. This novel is set around Brighton and has a good plot with a plausible background. This entertaining story gives a nice insight into the work of the Police High Tech Crime Unit and how criminals may use computers. Looking Good Dead is another crime thriller in the DS Roy Grace series. Although the main character in this series is DS Roy Grace, it is all about networking and working as a team. Lots of favours are asked between various people, who respond and together save the day. There is a nice dry gallows humour between the Police Officers...A good choice of location for a safe house, Grace thought, except for one minor detail that appeared to have been overlooked. Who in their right bloody mind would put a paedophile in a house a few hundred yards away from a school playing field? He shook his head. Didn't anybody ever think?'Is Mr D'Eath expecting us?' Nicholl asked.'With morning coffee and a box of Under Eights I expect.' Norman Potting said, following this with a throaty chuckle....This book is a brilliant illustration of the wonders of team work. Without the flagging and passing on of tiny bits of information between many Police Officers, these crimes would not have been solved. Peter James is very good on police procedures in this book of 519 pages which was published in 2006. Looking Good Dead is a good story and I vote it 4 stars. This is a stand-alone novel, although reading it straight after Dead Simple, it is a seamless follow-on. I am a little disappointed at how much appeared to be brought over from Dead Simple, which is quite lazy as this was not new content. There is another dramatic ending in the style of an action hero movie. Looking Good Dead shows how ordinary acting and looking people could be involved in the darker side of society, without anyone suspecting.
—Stephen Clynes

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