Lazybones by Mark Billingham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Maybe you need to be in the right mood to tolerate the volume of verbal violence and the never-ending angst — I mean seriously, people, stop whinging and be a man — of the characters, but I found it a little tedious. Maybe it helps too if your life is tickety-boo and not full of your own angst! So trying to set that aside, I still liked the book. The characters emerged from the book as fully-formed alive individuals, and the plot was suitably convoluted with wonderful huge, honking clues that could or could not lead you down the right path. I figured out fairly quickly where to look for the who in whodunnit. But I was pleasantly surprised at the final reveal. I say pleasantly because a good mystery is one where the writer stays ahead of the reader or enough ahead that at least you don’t solve it in chapter one.
Even though I had not read the previous books in this series, it didn’t make a difference other than I knew I was missing the continuing story of some of the regular characters. But they’re drawn so well that you could follow along well enough.
