Reviews for Unsafe

The average rating for Unsafe based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-10-08 00:00:00 Marybeth Mallios I've read all five of these now and each time have the same feeling, that the so-called heroine Karen is so awful that you have no sympathy for anything that happens to her, but they are still exciting police thrillers. In this one, set several years after the last book, Karen is living alone with Mairead staying for the Uni holidays, and they both appear to be dating Karen's younger colleague Marcus, who himself is pretty screwed up. They investigate the murder of a young mother who has been horrifically tortured, and discover that the children are living with the likely abusers, who happen to be related to a drug-dealer that Karen has had a run in with previously. She's also undercover for the secret service again, sleeping with a mysterious businessman who may or may not be a criminal, this isn't really resolved. Karen reveals herself to be a complete psychopath who will use anything or anyone in the pursuit of her own ends, but given that she is motivated more by revenge than any noble purpose - she does want to protect her daughter, but their relationship is fairly twisted, and save the innocent children, but that seems somehow peripheral to her getting the bad guys. The previous books go some way to explaining her twisted psyche, by surely by now she could stop the emotional self-harm with every man she gets close to. There isn't a single likeable character in the book ( Pete Bains barely features and she's screwed him over too so he's all twisty now) and the police are all pretty rotten. A hard book to rate, as while I can't say I enjoyed it, I did speed through it once it got going, and while it isn't particularly clever and the sudden ending annoyed me too, it wasn't your typical British police drama either. I guess if you liked the previous books it's worth continuing but there's no redemption here, I can't decide if I want to read more or not, it would be nice if they could wrap things up with a decent ending.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-12-13 00:00:00 Brian Claeys This one really made me think. The "ends justify the means" message was extremely annoying; seemed a little too much like artistic cheating. If you can't figure out how to get the mystery solved and the kids saved and the perps doing their time without breaking the law, you've set up a bad story. This may be true to life, as in things like this may actually happen, but that doesn't make it right, and in my opinion it's sloppy mystery writing to use illegal means to attain the hoped-for conclusion. Also very disturbing, with the question raised on the back of the jacket: how are Karen's and Mary's worlds different? Both of these women do whatever they feel like to accomplish the goal they have, making themselves happy. There's not a "good guy" in this book to cheer for, and that weakens the story too much to make it worthwhile.