Saturday, August 8, 2015

50. Darkness First - James Hayman

McCabe & Savage #3
read on my iPhone
2013 Witness Impulse eBook
496 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery
Finished beginning of August, 2015
Goodreads rating: 4.08
My rating: 3
Setting: Contemporary Eastport/Machias, Maine

First line/s:  "At 7:47 on a Friday evening in August, Dr. Emily Kaplan's office was still open, as it was every Friday night, for the convenience of those who found it difficult to come in at any other time."

My comments:  I don't think I enjoyed this third in the series as much as the first two.  The setting has changed a bit - from Portland to the Eastport/Machias area.  The main protagonist changes from McCabe to his sidekick, Maggie, but McCabe puts in a brief appearance near the end.  Characters travel from one place to another quickly, which is a bit off-putting, because the distance between, say, Machias and Augusta isn't just a hop, skip, and jump like the plot implies.  The whodunit part was cleared up early on (as far as I was concerned), which was a bit of a let-down.  However, because the setting was so real to me, it was still a fairly decent mystery, and I don't hate the characters (though there's a bit of an interesting, though unsettling twist, in this one) I'll happily look forward to a fourth installment.

Goodreads synopsis:  The mutilated body of a young woman. The town doctor lying comatose in the road. A hundred and fifty tablets of Canadian OxyContin. This is the havoc that a merciless killer has wreaked on a sleepy Maine seaport.
          As detectives Maggie Savage and Michael McCabe investigate, they realize the man they are after does not exist. Nobody knows his real name. Nobody has seen his face. But everybody fears his blade.
          The only one who may know the murderer's true identity is an eleven-year-old girl—who has vanished into thin air.
          Taut, twisting, and starring two unforgettable heroes, Darkness First will thrill fans of John Sandford and C. J. Box.

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