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Lynda La Plante
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Book
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Publisher | Simon & Schuster | ||
ISBN | 9781849834353 | ||
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Reviewer
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Selina
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Synopsis
Dedicated, intuitive and utterly obsessive, DCI James Langton is ruthless in his pursuit of a gang of illegal immigrants, killers of a young prostitute. When he is horrifically, almost fatally injured by one of them, it falls upon DI Anna Travis to put her own career on hold as she nurses him through his intense frustration and desperation to bring his would-be murderer to justice. Then Anna is assigned to a different case, the brutal killing of a quiet, studious woman whose body was discovered by her daughter returning home from school. A senseless attack with no obvious motive or immediate suspect. Until, chillingly, the case becomes unexpectedly linked with Langton's and Anna finds herself under similar threat from those who almost destroyed his career and his life.
Review
Another novel in the Anna Travis detective series, Clean Cut starts with tragedy striking as DCI James Langton is near fatally injured whist on duty. He pulls through, but requires a lot of rehab, which as a man used to being in the thick of things, he isn't too happy about. The first part of the book focuses on the strain this puts on Anna as she tries to juggle work, being James' carer and fighting off rumors that the DCI will never return to policing.
Once back in the game, Langdon becomes obsessed with catching his killer, and it turns out his and Annas' cases are related, and the story becomes centered around the topic of illegal immigration. Some of the characters in the book are used to express views on the governments inability to tackle illegal immigrants, and the failings of the criminal justice system, particularly parole officers, and i have no doubt that some of this is true. However i did find it all got a bit bogged down. Ifelt it was, again, a slow story to get going, and at times I found myself skimming sections to get to where things were actually happening (after all, how many times do we need to read that anna went back to the incident room to type up her report, the coffee was bad etc?). Despite this the characters are very realistic and you do feel you understand them, and can imagine how the police team work, but again, maybe the story would flow better as a TV show than a book?
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