The Stranger You Seek by Amanda Kyle Williams
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
About 25 pages into this book, I really liked it. The detective, her support network of family, friends and coworkers seemed to have a nice dynamic, the story had a good mix run and gun bounty hunter action and behavioral profiler procedural and a nicely nasty serial killer. It was really promising and I was already writing a 4 star* review in my head where I apologized for saying all the Shamus award nominees always suck.**
By 125 pages in my review of the book had shed a star because nothing was happening. By 200 pages I was planning a 2-star review because the plot twist in the middle was stupid and because I had already, basically, figured out the mystery AND because nothing was still happening.
Then with 50 pages to go, right when the narrative tension should have been at it's highest, when the mystery should have been solved and the the climatic confrontation between killer and detective should be beginning, the detecitve goes off on a subplot to look for a missing cow.
A missing cow.
The entire momentum of the serial killer plot (what little of it there was) is stopped so that the detective can go look for A MISSING COW. At that point I was done with the book, but of course, my policy is to only review books that I've finished. So I slogged through.
And you know what? In the last 30 pages (yes, the missing cow subplot took 20 fucking pages), when the detective FINALLY gets around to solving the mystery that I had figured out in the previous 180 (cowless) pages?...still nothing happens.
Pic Related (from comixed.com)
The detective dithers about with a downright silly interrogation of the killer, and a whole lot of political nonsense.
The climax between the detective and the killer? About a page long. And that pages doesn't even make much damn sense.
* The book loses a star early for having in its opening pages a shootout that, if it had happened in real life would have had the detectives arm splattered all over the pavement when she stupidly reaches inside a house to unlock a door, knowing full well there's a bail jumper with a shotgun on the other side.
** If Clare DeWitt and the City of the Dead doesn't win the Shamus award for best first PI novel, I am done with PWA forwever.
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