Name: The Dead of Winter
ISBN: 9780670020935

Rennie Airth

A former police investigator tries to solve the murder of his employee, Rosa Novak, following clues through war-torn Europe in 1944, and discovers a connection between the victim, a murdered Parisian furrier, a member of the Resistance, and stolen diamond

The Dead of Winter

Amber Laha

This book started interesting, but what I was hoping and expecting I did not get. I wanted thrilling, exciting, suspense and instead I got boring procedural crap that was very tedious to get through. The reason for the first murder, that everything else seemed to stem from, wasn't juicy or thrilling and I found myself being completely let down by the case itself for that reason. 

The book itself is boring, for the reasons I said above, and I felt the author went too far to being realistic. We all know, I hope, that real police work is boring for the most part. There isn't a lot of action when it comes to the in-between moments of trying to find out the clues and the puzzle pieces, but when it comes to fiction, you want it to be fast pace and exciting and for the in-between to be there, but not be the majority of the book. All you ever get for the most part is the in-between. It isn't until practically the very end that you get any action.

Also, a huge disappointment was that for 95% of the book you never really saw John Madden, this book is the third in the John Madden series, and it is suppose to surround him, yet we barely see him until the very end and then he's there only for the action parts. 

I am one of those people who cares very much about grammar, it is a vital part of keeping me in the story and for me also to enjoy it even more. I don't mind when it is once in a while, but when it keeps occurring it is problematic. Having someone write an incomplete sentence every three pages is so grating, and that is exactly what this author does. He goes on this sentence and tries intricacy where it fails because he keeps forgetting the vital parts of the sentence that will connect it all together. 

Overall, a boring procedural book that had nothing to do with the namesake of this series, and major grammatical issues for me. 
*Yes, I did skim the last hundred or so pages.*
2 stars

The Dead of Winter

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