Silent Voices, by Ann Cleeves

I think I got this for 99p because a couple of reviewers singled it out as being one of the best Vera Smith novels, but it was really poor.

This had the feel of a female version of DI Frost - but the story was rubbish: the reader has no way to solve it, and in the final chapter Kim just explains everything to the rest of the team (and the reader), incidentally revealing stuff that she'd found out but the rest of the team (and the reader) would have no way of knowing. Also, the crime was a bit implausible, with a teenager trying to drown a 4 year-old child in front of its mother. At the end of the book:

'Eliot almost killed a four-year-old child because he was jealous of her?' Ashworth was incredulous.
Vera shrugged. 'We'll probably never know exactly why he threw her in the water'

Great, so don't bother trying to justify this bit of unbelievable plot to your readers then.

Don't read anything more by this author!

Completed : 02-Jul-2017

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