Moses Reilly is a star detective. Renowned for his
excellent performance and fierce investigative abilities.
He’s more than up for the challenge of a strangely posed
body left in one of London’s more affluent areas… aided, at the insistence of
his superiors, by Zelda
Zelda works for G4S, an international mercenary
organisation – and her leader is very wary when a body appears on her doorstep.
Of course she has far greater mysteries for Moses to
discover
There are a few aspects about this book I like. I like
that despite this book being a romance, there is a definite focus of getting
the job done. I love that Moses is focused most on catching the murderer than
he is on Zelda no matter how delectable he finds her. Even though he fixates on
her (and she on him) a painful amount of the time he is very much focused on
the police work
Except for a moment I’ll come to, I really liked how the
investigation proceeded with lots of police work, red herrings, running things
down, investigating etc etc. I really like how it’s done
The writing is generally good, though it borders on
over-elaborate. Except when you get to the sex scenes which are purpler than a bruised
Barney. And we had some plot lines (like Paula the affair) and characters who
don’t seem to have any purpose.
But it isn’t our genre
Oh yes yes yes one of the characters is a werewolf
But it’s irrelevant. She doesn’t actually shapeshift
until the last chapter long after pretty much everything is resolved. About the
only way werewolf-ness is actually a thing is by giving her a sense of smell
that actually allows her to vaguely contribute to the police investigation (and
even then, it’s dubious. Everyone just accepts she has this amazing sense of
smell and is willing to base an entire police investigation on it?) – in fact,
it would have been just as useful and maybe even better to make her an
extremely skilled forensic scientist. At least then she would be valued and useful
to the team due to her skills and knowledge rather than woo-woo. When you can
literally replace the word “werewolf” with “forensic scientist” I think it’s
dubious to even put it in our genre
It’s also frankly ridiculous how easily and casually
Moses accepts the idea of her being a werewolf. There’s also a beyond ridiculous
moment where he proves her love for her by not requiring proof – the fact he
just believes her (and relies on her nose) is considered some kind of loving
gesture.
Let me say right now, if your definition of love includes
“I believe everything my partner says, even if I’ve only known them a week, no
matter how ridiculous” then I’m going to judge that as severely unhealthy
The only other aspect her werewolf-dom adds is the
concept of “mate”. I.e. “I don’t need to develop a romance between these
characters because WOO-WOO compels them!” They smell each other. They feel the
hawtness and lo that’s it. Sex and love follow
Now don’t get me wrong, as it develops they do do a lot
of good in that relationship as I’ve mentioned, but that old werewolf trope is
still trotted out to kick start the relationship in a rather lazy fashion
There are other aspects I’m either not fond of or found
jarring – though not nearly as much as I expected. This book is set in the UK
and unlike many American authors it does a generally really good job. There are
a few moments (why is this woman running around London with a gun? And some of
the profanity is just… weird) but it generally works well. Same goes for the
police work – a detective posing as a date dating websites, even going on
dates, to catch scammers? Isn’t that best left to IT, especially since I don’t
think those kind of scammers generally try to meet in person anyway?
I also do not see the need for Susie, a rather pathetic
shadow of a character who literally exists just to worship Moses. Literally
that’s the sole purpose of her existence – she even refers to him as “My Hero”…
I don’t see the purpose of her except to put Moses on a pedestal.
There’s also a point in the investigation that sits
poorly with me. They’re all convinced that the murder points to a political
killing related to G4S’s mercenary activities. There are several clues pointing
that way and they say over and over that this can’t be a coincidence – except when
they think the killer is a woman then half of the book’s worth of “this is
definitely political” is thrown out without a single second thought and
replaced with “woman spurned!” No other evidence needed, just the fact the
killer may be female means she can only have one possible motive.
We have one noticeable POC, a minor police character who
is Asian and Sikh. We have some peripheral women except for Zelda, but they are
peripheral.
Most interesting with have Romanian character who has
some excellent commentary on how people think about her character, her
nationality and how they do not understand her experiences and context. It does
come with some seemingly ignorant ideas about Romany
Interestingly G4S is actually a company (does the author
on stock?) only in the UK it’s generally known less for being an elite, super
skilled organisation, so much being rather incompetent organisation which keeps
getting some really sweet contracts to be paid a lot of money to do jobs poorly
(see also 2012 Olympics, Medway Youth Jail, charging the government for “tagging”
prisoners who were actually dead, appalling human rights abuses – and yes I am
going to mention this when a book tries to do a fluff piece about such an
appalling organisation. I’m also not a fan about how utterly casual everyone is
about incorporating Zelda into their police investigation, especially when they
think the murder may directly be related to G4S’s activities. It felt… lazyily
handled
I think that’s an underlying issue with many of my
problems in the book: G4S’s inclusion, the ultimate murderer, Zelda’s
incorporation, invoking werewolves and believing in them – it feels lazy, like
these elements are included to move the story forward while being rickety
bridges over glaring plot holes
In terms of series… I see this is book one. It’s possible
that, after this preamble, future books will actually contain a bit more of a
the supernatural – enough for it to actually belong on an Urban Fantasy or
Paranormal Romance shelf. As it is, if you’re looking for a contemporary
romance, this would fit. If you’re a fan of the supernatural look elsewhere.
