I’d really liked the first in this series and had no hesitation picking up the second when it came out. But then it hit one of my things authors do that wind me up points and it took me ages to actually read it through.

The first book which was a very personal story delving back into the main character’s childhood, could a second book where Aaron Falk was ‘just’ a detective be as good? Obviously I was concerned that it wouldn’t be but I think the author pulled it off. I think it helped that Aaron’s not really a murder investigator, he’s some kind of financial shenanigans investigating cop who gets pulled in when a witness in one of his cases disappears. I liked the way the story was told: the events surrounding the murder were related at the same pace as the detectives investigating uncovered the clues and this got the reader very involved in the lives of the people at the heart of the murder investigation. And as in the first book there’s a distinctly Australian flavour to it, the plot wouldn’t have been the same if it was set elsewhere.

Overall then I really enjoyed it and will be back for more. Oh, and the thing that winds me up is that Aaron Falk gains a detective partner in this book, Carmen Cooper, and the author continually refers to them as “Falk and Carmen”, the male barely gets referred to by his first name, the female barely by her surname. It has annoyed me in other books and so I saw it here even though I’d have to admit that Harper doesn’t otherwise have the kind of sexist nonsense going on that has come with this pairing of names in other books. There’s a point late on in the book where I wondered if the author had done it deliberately in order to reveal something else, but I’m not sure, and I can’t see any reason that Carmen couldn’t, at least occasionally, have been “Cooper”. A very minor quibble really but one I wanted to note anyway.