Review: The Killer in the Snow (DI James Walker #2) by Alex Pine

          

Print Length: 400 pages

Publisher: Avon (November 11, 2021)

From Goodreads.com: The first fall of snow can be fatal…

A year has passed since DI James Walker cracked his biggest case yet, and he’s hoping for peace and quiet this festive season.

But across the fells, a local farmer returns home on Christmas Eve to find footsteps in the fresh snow that lead down to his unused basement – and no footsteps leading away. Days later, his body is found, alongside those of his wife and daughter.

Without a neighbour for miles, there are no witnesses and little evidence. And the crime scene has strange echoes of another terrible murder committed at the farmhouse, twenty years earlier…
 
James knows that to catch this killer, he needs to solve a case that has long since gone cold…

                                                         *******************

My Rating: 2 stars out of 5

Although this is book number two in the series, you do not have to have read the first in order to understand and enjoy this one. 

While this to me, feels more like a police procedural than a thriller, it sadly fell flat in both categories. The writing comes across as very dry, with nothing to make the characters stand out from each other.  So much so that aside from DI Walker, I had trouble keeping the rest of them separated. Added to that, it seemed like every day a new lead came to them freely with little investigating actually done on their part, and while there are numerous suspects brought in over the course of the book, none of them seemed to bring anything interesting to the plot. 

Another issue that I had was that despite the author's best efforts at concealing the truth of what had happened in the present-day murders, to me it seemed fairly obvious. So much so that I never believed their prime suspect had anything to do with it despite the original evidence seeming to say otherwise. 

There was also the small matter of the one side-story (which to me was a tad more interesting than the main story), is wrapped up in too nice a bow. I would have thought a criminal mastermind such as this character was purported to be would have put more effort into his plan of revenge than what was given to us. 

Despite the issues I personally had with this novel, if in the future I come across another with an interesting premise, I would give this author another chance. 

DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher. This has not affected my review in any way. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are 100% my own.

                                                         *******************

The Killer in the Snow is Available from Amazon.com