Aftershock (Bob Skinner Mysteries) [Hardcover]

Quintin Jardine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 10, 2008 | Series: Bob Skinner Mysteries

Still reeling from the tragic death of a much-loved colleague, Detective Chief Constable Bob Skinner and his men soon discover that a disturbed serial killer is still at large and very close to home. The body of a young woman has been found on a golf course. It has been there for 10 days, and it is the middle of a steamy summer holiday; she's not a pretty sight. But the way she has been laid out is uncannily familiar. The body has been “composed,” just like the bodies of three other young women in a previous case. Could it be the work of a copycat killer? Further investigation finds that the woman was having a relationship with the son of a Tory MP, and that her ex-boyfriend is a policeman with a reputation as a serious womanizer. Now Skinner must find the killer as fear spreads through Edinburgh, and politicians begin to raise their heads.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Jardine's hard-hitting 18th Bob Skinner mystery picks up the major plot strands of the 17th entry, Death's Door (2007), in which the Scottish deputy chief constable and his loyal team identified Daniel Ballester as responsible for four murders. Tragically, they lost one of their own, Steve Steele, when the room Ballester hanged himself in was rigged with explosives by Drazen Boras, the brother of one of the victims. Now the discovery near a golf course of a young woman's body bearing the hallmarks of Ballester's MO suggests that Skinner's team got it wrong. When another young woman is shot dead in Spain, where Skinner and his new lady friend, Scotland's first minister, are on holiday, Skinner himself falls under suspicion. Meanwhile, Steele's widow searches for Boras. Keeping track of the personal relationships among Skinner's crew may be a challenge for newcomers, who may also be impatient with scenes more in keeping with a soap opera than a police procedural. (Aug.) ""
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Review

Is a copycat killer at work in Edinburgh? Could it be DCC Bob Skinner himself?Talk about bad lies. At the edge of an Edinburgh golf course, a pretty young woman is found brutally murdered. Instantly, the jittery police are reminded of something they'd prefer to forget: a clever, ruthless serial murderer whose handiwork only recently had Edinburgh on edge. Like the earlier victims, Sugar Dean has been dispatched by a bullet to the back of the head. Again like the others, Sugar, a talented painter, has a connection to the art world. But hasn't the serial killer been killed himself? So is this murder the work of a copycat? At length it turns out that Big Bob himself was on the links the day Sugar met her end and is on the scene to discover still another female corpse. The suspiciously coincidental timing of Skinner's movements, together with his ownership of certain paintings pertinent to the case, suddenly make the second highest ranking cop in the nation a person of interest - a plot twist that may well strain the credulity of series loyalists.Too long and too talky. Fans may long for the time when Jardine (Death's Door, 2007, etc.) served them up taut and tense. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Headline Book Publishing (August 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0755329120
• ISBN-13: 978-0755329120
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,241,123 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars DANGER: This book is hard to put down., July 15, 2008

By 

William Howard - See all my reviews

This review is from: Aftershock (Bob Skinner Mysteries) (Hardcover)

First off, let's talk about what this book really isn't. It's not a deep exploration of the human psyche, it's not a look at a disturbing and twisted world of serial killers, and it's really not all that messed up, when you get down to it. The back matter in other words, lies to you, as does the really quite eerily pretty picture of a run down house on the cover.

It's a book about policing, it acts as an ideologue platform for someone to talk about reform in the Scottish police system, the same way that Tom Clancy books are really just ways to talk about international counter terrorism policy and why America is great. There similarities end. This is not a novel about fast paced action, it's really a lot more like watching an episode of The Bill.

An ensemble cast mean that it takes 38 pages for the titular main character, Bob Skinner, to get introduced, so many other characters must be thrown at us, and so much ongoing office politics has to get canvassed. The writing about policing is only moderately interesting, the crimes committed, despite being murders, are not anywhere on par with creepy descriptions to be found in other examples of the serial killer genre. In fact, the crimes and police work eventually give way to some form of masturabatory detective fantasy where one of the secondary characters succeeds in catching what amounts to a super villain of a corporate scumbag.

But for all of this, I enjoyed the book. It really WAS easy to read, and despite the fact that I don't usually read this genre, or enjoy out and out office politics descriptions, or being lectured to about the correct way to write policies (especially when I disagree with said policies), I honestly found the book hard to put down. Chapter breaks come at appropriate times, and never are all that long - 440 pages includes 104 chapters - giving you nice points to think "just one more and then I'll sleep". The characters ARE well written, and although the serial killer is not themselves given to us in gruesome detail, and the interviews the officers get suffer from "the guilty always confess", it was fun.