So after I enjoyed The Long Count I had liked it enough that I put a hold on the next book in the series about Texas Ranger John Quarrie. It arrived pretty quickly (Barnsley libraries are really good!) so I picked it up soon after.
However, I really didn't like it as much as I liked The Long Count. My main issues is that there were far too many characters, lots of whom were law enforcement, and some of whom had very similar names. It meant I couldn't remember who was police and who wasn't, and who outranked who. There are local police and Texan colleagues and even federal police, and I found that all very confusing.
So, John Q is called to a break in at a gun store where the owner was left beaten and he ends up chasing two people called Wiley and Henderson who did it, and ends up shooting Wiley dead. Then a man (I'm not clear on who he was/what his job was) turns up dead in a hotel room in Wichita Falls, and although it looks like he died of natural causes, John Q has an inkling there's more to it, and indeed, he has died from an overdose of a thyroid drug. Those drugs, it turns out, were stolen from the house of a woman called Gigi, who is a club singer, and who was having an affair with an investigator called Earl. Her relative Nana lives in a house given to her by a man called Rosslyn F Tobie, who is a lawyer but who is also running basically an organised crime syndicate. He employs his illegitimate son, Franklin, who poses as a cab driver when John Q arrives in New Orleans and proceeds to stalk John Q all over town.
There's also some tie ins with real life, with what happened to John F Kennedy and so on. I didn't like this - I'm not conspiracy minded at all and it just annoyed me.
I'm giving this three out of five stars and unfortunately I think this is where John Q and I part ways. I was hoping I'd have found a new crime series to read, but this one has put me off too much.
No comments:
Post a Comment