About Me

My photo
I read a lot of books and I write about them on here. Mummy Geek is sometimes a guest blogger....people seem to love her.....Oh and you can find me on Twitter.....@book_geek_says. Shortlisted for Blog of the Year by the 2015 Love Stories Awards...THANK YOU!!

Tuesday 4 March 2014

Review: The First Rule of Survival

Publisher: CR Crime
Price: £ 7.99

So, word on the street is that this is going to be THE book of the summer for crime fans. In South Africa, 7 years ago, three boys went missing without a trace. Now, seven years later, some things have happened that cause a whole new world of light to be shed on the case and DeVries is on it.

When I picked this book up, I read page 1 and 2 and it took me a few hours to feel like picking it up again. I'm not sure why to be honest as the blurb had the book sounding pretty good, as did its back story and potential hopes of the big time. Anyway, in the beginning I was rather in to this book. A mysterious case, unexplained deaths and disappearances as well as racial tensions and a main character that was a total dick, but one I could love.

However, about 100 pages before the end I started to get a bit annoyed as it seemed like the conclusion was being rushed and perps etc were being seemingly plucked from thin air. It felt a bit like the author thought he should finish the book and just picked the end at random. But, thankfully, there is more explanation within the last 25 pages of the book. However, why leave it so late and let me get so bloody annoyed??

The final few pages were awesome. They were unexpected and showed you, to an extent, the futility that can be behind staying on the straight and narrow. Sometimes, you do have to go rogue to get the answers you want.

As I said, with characters, DeVries is a messed up bad boy cop who I now love. February was a decent chap and some of the others at the top of the police were total bellends who I hate. Also, the perps and suspects were suitably hideous and big slime balls.

A crime novel in a different setting, (haven't really read much set in SA), so that was interesting as there was context and tangents not just related to the crime story in hand. If you do get annoyed, persist as the final few pages are rather hard hitters.

Happy Reading

Book Geek
:-D


No comments:

Post a Comment