Review: Dead Town (Raine and Hume #3) by Stephen Williams

                                                                   

Print Length: 318 pages

Publisher: Joffe Books (September 17, 2024) 

From Goodreads.com: She digs up London’s past crimes. Her blog is called Deadtown. Now she’s dug up something that got her killed.

Detective Mary Hume stares at the crime scene in confusion. She’s in an empty flat. Peeling wallpaper. A bloodstained chair in the middle of the room.

But no body.

Her sergeant hands her a burner phone. On it is a video clip. It shows a woman. Tied to the chair in the flat, a carving knife pressed to her throat. As Mary watches in horror, the blade flashes across the woman’s exposed skin. She slumps forward, lifeless.

Placed in the woman’s lap is a piece of cardboard. Written on it in blood-red is one DEADTOWN.

The phone was handed in to Charing Cross police station the day before. The woman in the video is Melissa Clarke. A true crime blogger famous for exposing London’s most notorious cold cases.

Just what did Melissa dig up that got her killed?

To find the answers, Mary calls on maverick ex-police officer Raine. Raine thinks outside the box. She can reach people — and places — that Mary can’t.

Then a second body is discovered — and the two detectives realize that someone is playing twisted mind games with them.

Can they pull the pieces of the puzzle together before more people die?

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My Rating: 3 stars out of 5

I have very mixed feelings on this book. I have categorized my thoughts into the three main issues. 

The first being that I did not realize that this was the third in a series. And while that didn't hinder me from understanding this one, I do feel like I missed out on a lot of the complexities that make the characters of Hume and Raine the way they are. It is obvious that there was something deeper going on there than just former mother and daughter-in-law that I felt like I was missing out on. However, I think Raine's approach to grief was well written and it made it easy to emphasize with some of the more reckless choices she made. 

The second was that for all of the action in this book, things seemed to drag on throughout most of it. I'm not sure if this is because there seemed to be so much going on with all of the different characters exploring different things (some things pertaining to Melissa's case, others not), that it just became to muddled or what, but there were times I could easily put this novel down to go to other things. 

The final issue I had with this story is entirely a personal one of my own. I feel like this book was trying too hard. At one point an officer tries to help Hume out of the car as they said that the ground was very slippery (mind you she is above said officer in rank). Not only does Hume take exception to being called ma'am, but she also seems almost insulted that the officer offered his hand to help her and even questions if he did that to every officer. Personal pet peeve I know, but people who genuinely act like this irritate me. The officer was trying to be nice to a superior officer, there was no reason to react the way she did. A simple no thank you, would have sufficed, along with her preference of being called guv instead. 

I was also annoyed by the fact that both Raine and Hume somehow manage to disarm their opponents by always breaking their wrists (in Hume's case it was with a kick). It was like the author couldn't think of another way to disarm the bad guys than that. 

Now those things aside, I thought that the idea of this story was one of the most unique ones that I have seen in a long time. The idea of using artificial intelligence in order to "murder people", as part of a game was intriguing. And honestly, I would not be surprised if a game like this didn't pop up in the future (although hopefully without the horrific truths that this one included). And as I said previously, the characters were all complex and individual which made them stand out against each other, while still working well as a team. 

All that being said, I do believe that this book will be well received by fans of the series, and I enjoyed it enough that I will be going back to book one to 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.