The Blood Spilt (Rebecka Martinsson Series #2) Book

I feel terribly guilty marking down someone's work as 'poor/did not like it' but the more I think about the book the more it makes me annoyed. The first in the series was infinitely better in most respects, it's hard to believe this is the same author.

One positive - the plot is interesting and well woven. Not too many clumsy red herrings and it builds suspense gently. That was the only thing that kept me going to the end.

The narrative style is not ow I recall the first book. It's very staccato and not at all a style that's appropriate or easy to read.

In my edition each chapter's first page was in a modern typeface and the rest of the chapter in a Roman typeface. Is that the publisher or the author who thought that would be appropriate? How pretentious.

Drab and dull. Loads of fairly inconsequential and really drawn out reminiscences by pretty much every main character that completely ruin the pace. I know it's sacrilege but in the last third I started skipping passages.

The 'wolf passages' might have been deeply symbolic if this was a major literary work rather than a book in the nordic crime genre. But as it was they just got in the way and I ended up skipping them. This symbolism and the typeface thing made me feel as though there was a lot of self indulgence in the writing without the originality and directness that made the first book so promising.

The final criticism - the main character Rebecka Martinson isn't that relevant to the story. She's a coincidental bystander who effects no influence on events and could have been any character. Sure there's a sense of deja vu for her when she gets caught up in things but it's hardly worth basing a whole book around this.

Won't be contiuning this series. Off to seek out my next Scandi/Nordic author.