REVIEW:
Peter James – Dead Man’s Grip
Reviewed by: Ananthakrishnan
Dead
Man's Grip is my first foray into the world of Peter James and I believe it is
a world that I want to look into further. A quick search on the internet
reveals the fact that Peter James' novels are meticulously well-built stories
that shower a lot of attention to detail - in the world of crime fiction these
would be named as well written police procedurals. The plot and the settings in
itself are fairly riveting and the results are a fairly well-paced and well-etched
out novel.
The
action begins with a four-way accident which leaves an unfortunate cyclist
dead. Carly Chase who was driving a car (who ends up not playing any actual
role in the accident thanks to her quick reflexes) is fairly shook up but then
life goes further downhill when worse news comes calling - the other two
participants in the mishap have been brutally murdered after being tortured and
all signs point to her as the next one in line. Not to mention the fact that
the dead cyclist is the grandson of a jailed American Mafia don. So with this
being the mise-en-scene it is a race against time for our protagonist,
Detective Roy Grace, to save Carly from the hands of a sadistic killer.
As
is evident the plot has all the ingredients for a pot-boiler but I really do
have to admit that the book does not do justice in terms of the
'race-quotient'. Though the book is by no means grating I believe that such a
good story warranted a lot of fast paced action with a lot of twists and turns
thrown in for good measure. Well, that’s the other thing - this is not a
suspense / mystery thriller - the killer is known to the reader from the word
go, so all that the pages do reveal are a blow-by-blow account of how the
perpetrator is apprehended eventually. Having said that there are some things
that did grab me - the fleshing out of characters is quite even and is well
peppered throughout the book so as to not distract the flow but woven in deftly
to keep the continuum (Tooth may be a clichéd killer but I still enjoyed all
his parts). This being my first novel I did enjoy getting to familiarize myself
with all the recurring characters - I hope they continue to be as interesting
in the books to follow and are not mere fillers. Also the book was a
vindication to the 'devil-lies-in-the-detail' (dug the fact that Angry Birds is
featured in the novel along with Friend Mapper - an iPhone game and an
application - now that’s contemporary stuff) style of Peter James for this is a
well written account of the journey that Roy Grace is set to embark on - the
ending, as most of series book do, leaves a nice loose end that leaves the
reader wanting to know when the next book will be out - a nice touch.
In
summary, I am intrigued enough to explore Peter James' world a little more. A good
dose of police procedurals is something I always savor and I might find some of
my complaints being negated in the other books. It is clear that this is a good
book in what seems to be a pretty strong series - I believe that readers
already familiar with his work will be quick to accept this while the new
readers, like me, would be lured to take the plunge to understand Roy Grace and
Peter James' creation just that little bit more.
(Ananth is a software engineer from Chennai who loves reading but loves even more the dissecting that follows the read)
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