I couldn’t wait another year again for the next Rozan so I splashed out on the US hardback. This one is narrated by the male half of the PI team, Bill Smith, and the characters are closer to home investigating in New York City and New Jersey.

I didn’t like this as much as other episodes in the series, something about it missed me. I think it was that the setting was mainly concerned with American football and high schools and that Rozan was taking it for granted that I’d know a lot of details that as an Englishwoman who’s totally ignorant about American football I missed. I couldn’t work out what time of year the book was set, only that it was at the end of the football season. In the UK the football (soccer) season ends in May or thereabouts but taking it to be that didn’t seem to make sense with some of the other things in the book.

That isn’t to say that I didn’t like the book or that I missed the whole point. Just that some of the details went over my head when I’d rather that they hadn’t done.

Mostly this book is about young people trying to live up to what adults expect of them and about how lousy some of those adults are. I did feel that some of Rozan’s characters were painted in black and white in this book. One of the things I usually like about her characters is that no one is all bad but I thought that a few of the adult characters in this book were painted in pretty dark shades of grey. I think that level of characterisation was used on the adults so that the adolescent characters who were the main focus of the book reflected the adults but I still found it disappointing.

I’m sounding very negative when my main reaction to this book was positive, it’s just that I think that Rozan can and has done better.