One day I will learn that remaindered books are not always the bargain I think they are because you’re only saving money on something cheap if you actually want it. I’m not the brightest in that regard. At least this is a good selection for my birthday bingo card; the author was born 8/6 and the book prominently features an abandoned newborn.
I’m not one for mysteries typically, but I had just finished Tana French’s The Trespasser and realized I was nearing the end of her oeuvre, so I figured that as Blaedel had a series of books she had to be a decent enough writer. And that’s solidly where this lands; decent enough. It has enough twists and turns to be worth continuing, but it falls prey to the Chekov’s gun of mystery books – no character gets introduced for no reason in a mystery. Don’t get too attached to the redshirts.
Also, I think that the book suffers in part from being translated; the story is interesting enough if not particularly surprising, but the characters feel flat in a way that is only partially the author’s fault; it feels dictated rather than written I suspect due to the translation. I had a hard time telling the female protagonists – a newspaper reporter and her police officer friend, both working on the case of an abandoned newborn and the connection to dead women cropping up around the city – apart as they didn’t seem to have any flaws or eccentricities.
Not bad, but I think this is my last Blaedel book. Sorry, a mediocre review is a bad birthday gift.