[Comments taken from a mailing list discussion. They are out of contaxt and contain spoilers.]

[on the characters]

I think the characters were pretty consistent. I thought the time lapse worked well and we got to see how much Munch’s life had changed and I thought we came in at a good point (from a story point of view) in Mace and Caroline’s life too. Everyone had grown up and changed, moved on, it all seemed pretty realistic to me.

Ellen was an excellent new character and I’m glad to hear that she comes back for me in the future. I was gunning for her to sort her life out, even when she was doing dumb things I thought she was acting like a real person and not a caricature.

[on the plot]

I thought the weakness in this plot was the Romanian and plutonium and spy parts of it, I got all a little lost with what was going on at times, but to be honest I didn’t really care, I was too interested in what was going on with Munch and Mace and Ellen to be bothered by not really understanding what was going on on the other side of the plot sometimes. On the whole I thought it was a weaker plot than the first two books but still pretty good. I didn’t think the plot bled realism in the way that the character’s did, I think that was what was a bit out of kilter for me.

[on the scenes, setting]

Several people mentioned Victor’s suicide scene as something that didn’t work for them, I loved it and thought it was really funny how dumb Victor was being. I didn’t find this side of the plot very realistic so the silliness worked for me.

I can’t remember individual scenes now but I thought most everything that Munch and Ellen did was excellently written with tons of tiny details adding up to a real picture of who these people were.

In the first two books I felt that the setting could be nearly anywhere but this one felt more LA specific with the ride down to Mexico and the Olympics coming up.

[overall]

This series is staying pretty much on a level for me, it’s changing and each book is different but I’m not finding one book appreciably stronger or weaker than the next and this consistency is a good thing.

I like the ongoing background of drink/drugs rehabilitation and I’m enjoying and finding it illuminating seeing how Munch and her friends cope with it in their own ways.

Overall the series is great and I plan to keep right on with reading it.