Customer Reviews

Not Dead Yet

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Another amazing read from Peter James. This time Detective Superindendent Roy Grace is dealing with the world of celebrity and the people who become obsessed with them.
Plus Sandy shows up again but what does she want and what will she do to get it?
If you have never read one of these books in the series pick this up and prepared to be completely hooked.

- This is certainly as good as or better than any in this series. What was particularly good was the deft intricate weaving of several different plot lines in a way that the reader could manage with minimal difficulty. This is so often not the case.
- Excellent development of the principals. Roy and Cleo move slowly forward in a controlled manner, with the unresolved spectre of Sandy looming in the background. Meanwhile the situation with Branson, Bella and Potting adds another layer of intrigue
- You had all of the Hollywood type plot lines. Local actress makes good. Returns to her home town. Crazed stalker. Multiple personality. Former nemesis just released from prison. Snitch in the wings. It was all there.
- Roy Grace is a very believable protagonist; the back-up characters are solid for the most part. This is a good series.

This is a tale of obsession, in all its infinite variety and manifestations, some more lethal than others but mostly just a matter of degree, with neither gender being excluded from its clutches. There are enough seriously disturbed characters here to populate several novels, in a few different story lines.

The main plot deals with the discovery of an unidentifiable body whose headless, armless and legless torso is discovered on a chicken farm in East Sussex. As if that isn’t enough, the area is faced with an at once wonderful and problematic event: a major American superstar [think Lady Gaga, in fact the fictional counterpart is named Gaia] is about to arrive from Los Angeles, with her entourage and film crew, to Brighton, England, the city where she was born, to star in a film which will chronicle the love affair between King George the Fourth and his mistress Maria Fitzherbert. Needless to say, her hordes of obsessed fans converge on the city as well.

A second story line revolves around another obsessive, the target of this one none other than DS Roy Grace, in charge of the Major Crime Branch of Sussex CID. But a resolution, if any, of that one awaits a successive novel, I suspect. The personal lives of Grace and of Glenn Branson, to whom Grace is a mentor, get a lot of the focus in this, the eighth series entry, as Grace’s fiancée, Cleo, is in her last month of pregnancy, and Branson, who has become a “long-stay lodger” in Grace’s house since the latter moved in with Cleo, is facing child custody problems in the aftermath of his now-dead “marriage-from-hell.”

Cavil: It bothered me when, as happened frequently, the p.o.v. jumped around, sometimes without identifying the person from whose point of view the chapter was being told. I assume this was intentional, but it was somewhat disconcerting. As well, I felt that perhaps the first two-thirds of the book was somewhat bloated and repetitive, causing this reader’s attention to wander, a first for any of this author’s books. No wandering attention in the approximately last third of the book, I hasten to add, when the plot lines start to come together with more than one climactic scene, with a finish you’ll never see coming. All in all, it is recommended.

I really liked Not Dead Yet......James's attention to detail is amazing........
He keeps me on tender hooks & somehow I can never guess his endings.....