Dead Like You by Peter James

I’m beginning to feel a little bit top heavy on crime novels lately, but I do like them and it’s summer, which is my busy season at work, so I’ve been choosing my books for fun and relaxation.

I also have to admit that I often read other reviews before I write my own, mostly because I’ve already read several other books before I get around to writing a review and I need reminding of what the book was about. Usually a word or two suffices and the memory comes flooding back, but it’s often necessary all the same. What disturbs me about this is that some of the reviews can be the exact opposite of what I think of a book. It makes me doubt my own judgement, especially if I enjoyed reading it. What bothers me most though is that it seems to me that many of the critics are judging books against others which aren’t really relevant or even against an invisible wall of criteria which don’t really apply. When I review a book, regardless whether it’s Literature, crime, YA or a children’s book, I try and review and judge it within its own genre. I don’t expect anything profound from a crime novel, just as I expect children’s books to be fun and enjoyable. I can only rate a book in comparison to others like it, even if an author has hitherto written books of a different kind. You cannot really compare an apple to an orange even if they do come from the same garden. I guess what I’m trying to say is that most crime or mysteries are never going to be Nobel Prize material, but that doesn’t change my liking, or my regard for them. My reviews might just be a bit shorter because these types of books aren’t meant to be analysed to death. They were written for enjoyment and not to compete with great literature giants.

Having said my piece (which I have the sneaking suspicion isn’t the first time I’ve done that), on to the book.

This is one of the Superintendent Roy Grace series and follows the possible re-emergence of the Shoe Man, a rapist with a fetish for shoes, who eventually became a murderer. Grace is worried that he’ll continue to be able to pray on women and that his crimes may escalate if he cannot find and stop the man. The whole scenario was enough to make me glad that I haven’t a shoe fetish, or at least not a high-class, high-heel, designer shoe fetish. I could buy walking and hiking shoes/sandals from here to kingdom come, but you won’t get me into a pair of high heels (frankly that would just end in a visit to the hospital and possible several weeks of intense pain).

Back to the book at hand, the reader is also treated to a more in-depth look into Grace’s life with his wife Sandy opening up the book to a second dimension. Until now, Sandy has pretty much been put on a pedestal while Grace searches for her and the reason for her sudden disappearance. As Grace remembers the first investigation into the Shoe Man, James fleshes out Sandy and Grace’s relationship with her, offering the reader insight into possible motives for her vanishing act. It’s another reminder that things are often not as they seem, even with inside information.

I thought this was one of the better Grace novels. The mystery held my attention, James kept up the suspense well without becoming tedious and there’s enough character connection that you care what happens to them. 4 out of 5.

Dead Tomorrow by Peter James

Dead Tomorrow, another in the Roy Grace series, was intended to be another one of my good reads in Dec., but it turned out to be an almost harrowing read. Good, but harrowing.

Grace is called upon to investigate the death of a young man sucked up by a dredger off the coast of Brighton who appears to have had all his internal organs before being sewn back up and dumped in the ocean. At first, Grace has little to go on and the investigation doesn’t look like it will really take off, but James cleverly sucks the reader in by paralleling Grace’s search with the stories of several other people, one a man with a motorcycle, one a girl with chronic liver disease, and another of children living on the street in Bucharest. As Grace begins to make the connection between each of their lives, he discovers that evil is alive and well in the hearts of men.

Even though it’s fairly clear from an early stage where James is taking the story, the book sucks you in as you see each person’s standpoint and feel with them as they search for the right path to take. There were times while reading the book that I wanted to yell at the characters to just stop and think about what they were doing. It seemed amazing to me that they couldn’t see the danger they were in, but that too is a part of what makes the book such a good read. The people who find themselves in these situations are either desperate or have no access to vital information, or both and it’s easy to forget that when you live in a warm, comfortable world where more or less everything is all right.

The most shocking thing about the story is that it’s not beyond the realm of belief. I can thoroughly imagine the scenario taking place in the real world since man is so adroit at the justification of evil deeds in the search to fulfil his own wants. Also, if we place ourselves in these people’s positions and ask to what lengths we would go to given the ability or desire that drives James’ characters, can we honestly say we would behave differently than they, or do we really understand them, even if we know their actions to be wrong? How evil does this understanding make us? Does evil begin with the action or in the understanding of the action? Is the understanding and compassion we feel for and with the characters cancelled out by not taking the path of wrong or is it still there just waiting to surface in a situation where we no longer have the power or will to counter it?

These questions make no sense really unless you’ve read the book, but they are things I’ve thought about since reading it, which means this book fulfils one of my criteria for being called and excellent book. You can’t just put it down and forget about it. You find yourself thinking about the dilemmas days later even though you know how the story ends. Therefore, this one gets 5 out of 5 from me.