Another book i picked up recently in my quest to read new notable authors. Peter James was well liked and so i chose this book for my reading, especially because it's a long mystery novel.DS Grace is working on old cases and that reminds him of his shoe-man case. Based in 1998, Grace was never able to solve the case and the connected disappearance of a girl called Rachel Ryan. Novel is timed around the eve of Christmas and new year. Once again rape cases similar to the "shoe-man" cases of 1998 start to appear.Shoe-man is someone who gets attracted to woman who wear classy shoes and he uses the shoe to rape them.Quite a few characters get introduced to lend to the mystery.I am perfectly ok with long novels but the author here is not able to justify the 650 pages in this book. Much of the action starts at halfway and i think this should have been a 400 page book to justify a rather easy plot and a very tame investigation. This is a capable enough police procedural and certainly an easy read. The focus on the various suspects felt a little overdone and times and almost bordered on the exploitative. I think I'd have preferred something half as long that focussed only on the cops side of the story. I probably have a weakness for the Grace books because of their Brighton setting. Can't help finding him a little lacklustre as a 'tec. He seems to stumble across things rather than really investigating or making great leaps of intuitive understanding. An entertaining enough read despite all those criticisms though.
Loved this book and had never read any Peter James before but certainly will now. One word -scary!
—penny
I shall look at shoes in a whole different way now!
—Johnathan
Wat een geweldig boek weer van Peter James.
—bunhead
A few gaping holes, but a racy read.
—buyi
love the series
—Nia
