#1 Logan MacRae Scottish police procedural series. DS MacRae, on his first day back to work after a year-long medical leave following a stabbing that left him near-dead, ends up as lead investigator on a child murder casethe months-dead body of a four-year-old boy found in a ditch who appears to have been tortured and sexually abused. Logan was supposed to be gently transitioned back into work, but this murder kicks off a couple of weeks from hell, in which several other childrens bodies are found, though not all of them are related to the first case. Logan is also recovering from a break-up with his girlfriend, who happens to be the medical examiner/pathologist.
I had a really hard time putting this book downstayed up later than usual to finish it, in fact. The writing was very compelling and the story was quite interesting. While mostly a bleak, dark book, MacBride does inject enough humor into it so that it doesnt feel quite so grim. And I really do like Logan. However, after I finished it and thought back, there was much about the book and the procedures, etc. that I found to question. Perhaps police procedure works differently in Aberdeen, but it seemed to me that Logan, as a Detective Sergeant, had a whole lot more direct involvement, leadership responsibility and latitude with his activity than most other DSs Ive read about in other series, who seem to be assigned a lot of mundane detail work while the Detective Inspectors and higher do the actual investigation. He basically solves all the casesobviously hes brilliant, so why is he still a DS? As often happens I did figure out most of the cases well ahead of the policethese nice juicy obvious clues kept falling right in the readers lap! LOL
Also, the interconnections of all the various cases just seemed a little too pat, too coincidental. While not a sprawling metropolitan area, Aberdeen does have over 200,000 people and it just doesnt seem likely that these cases could all connect up like they did. There was also a lot of repetition with regard to descriptionsof the weather, especially. Yes, it was rainy and snowy. We get it. How many ways and times can that (or can wet and miserable policemen) be described without becoming tiresome? At any rate, despite those negatives, I am quite excited about this series and am looking forward to the next one but Im hoping MacBride learns to tighten things up a bit and makes the plots more plausible in future works.
