2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Down-on-his-luck former police detective on the gritty streets of Glasgow, Oct 9 2010
By A. Lee - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Stone Gallows (Paperback)
Cameron Stone was a rising young Detective on the Glasgow police force before he accidentally hit and killed a mother and her child while in an unmarked car, tailing a suspect. Serious injuries, being labeled a baby-killer, a temporary but bad period of relying on alcohol, leaving his job... and his wife taking his son and leaving him, brought him to a serious low. Now he's working, albeit, doing the odd dirty job for former colleagues and primarily doing much of the footwork for another former detective who now has a P.I. license. Can things get any worse? Perhaps. Someone seems to be out for his blood, local toughs try to beat him up, someone has painted "baby-killer" across his door, and he still needs to work on several cases and do some roughing up of his own...
The prologue is 40 pages long. It sets up Stone's situation, told from different points of view and in long sections in italics, in some detail. This part should be riveting, and it is in parts, since we know something horrible is going to happen. Fortunately, the main story moves entirely into the first-person with Stone and on to the various mysteries he's involved in, through his work, his contacts and his personal life, and the pace and action move ahead at a nice pace. The characters are well-drawn in that they are morally complex and conflicted and even Stone's rather shallow and ambitious ex- is wholly despicable, and Stone and his boss aren't at all totally admirable, yet remain fairly sympathetic. The number of things Stone needs to juggle keep the pace going and helps flesh out the story wrapped around an adequate central mystery. While Stone's back-story remains more compelling than the mystery, this is still a promising start to a series.
