Name: Nothing Like the Night
ISBN: 9780312328801

David Lawrence

Detective Stella Mooney heads up the investigation into the murder of Janis Parker, a crime in which the victim's roommate Stephanie James could be a likely suspect since the two young women shared a boyfriend, but the case is complicated by Stephanie's disappearance and the discovery of another corpse. By the author of The Dead Round in a Ring.

Nothing Like the Night

Kerri McDonald

Ok. I picked this book up at a library sale because the cover looked interesting and it was, like, 2 bucks. That was over 2 years ago. It sat in boxes and on my bookcase forever while I read other books in which I was more interested. I finally decided to give it a go, feeling like it had sat neglected long enough.

Well... it started out rough and I began to wonder if maybe I should have just left it on the shelf. I think I just had to adjust to the author's writing style and his tendency to talk about traffic in London all. the. time. I had to check a number of times to make sure I was, in fact, reading a murder mystery and not a reference book about traffic patterns in London. We get it. It's congested. Stop mentioning it.

When it got into the meat of the story, though, it became for more interesting and engaging. I'm going to admit up front that I watch a TON of ID Channel (more than a normal, healthy adult should, really), so this book was really right up my alley. Serial killers? The inner workings of the police department? Yes, please! Side story about (spoiler alert?) the main character super cheating on her main squeeze of, like, six years with some other dude? Less intriguing, but whatevs. I feel like I probably would have cared more about that storyline if I had read the previous Stella Mooney book, but as I had no idea that existed (random library sale buy, remember?), it just kind of fell flat for me.

And then. Then we arrive at the end. I went in not really caring for this book, got sucked into the drama.... and then it totally crapped out on me. I became suspicious that I wasn't going to be too thrilled with the ending when I realized I had, maybe, three pages left, and nothing had been resolved. Oh, that suspicion was soooo right. The end felt like the author had run out of steam and just finished it as quickly, conveniently, and ridiculously as possible. Such a freakin' cop-out.

...No pun intended.

So, overall, I liked the book, but I left it feeling dissatisfied.