Location: A small town on Catalina island. Lots of descriptions of the area, name dropping of local landmarks and a mass of boating terms. It’s a first novel in a new series. I get it. But to fill the opening chapters with terminology that will be unfamiliar to most readers makes for a very slow start to the book.
Main character: Stillwell is a cop posted to the island as a form of punishment because he challenged the way in which another detective, Aherne, handled a case. The details of this are given a fairly perfunctory explanation and didn’t add any illumination as to Stillwell’s character. Connelly goes them both nicknames – Stillborn and A-hole – and delights in using them ad nauseam. This interaction and a brief mention that Stillwell is divorced is the only backstory we get. The result is a fairly flat, uninteresting character who appears surly and suspicious most of the time. It was hard to like him, to be honest.
Love interest: Natasha (Tash) is the assistant harbour master who is useful for pushing the plot along. She also lacks any back story. She’s insecure, petulant and flounces off a lot. Why Stillwell is attracted to her is difficult to fathom. Maybe a case of like attracting like.
Plot: We have two murders – one the usual trope of a young woman murdered in mysterious circumstances. Stilwell solves this one through a series or fairly uninspiring interviews plus a bit of information from Tash; the other murderbis centred round local corruption (yawn) involving a beheaded buffalo and aliens. The murderer was pretty much signposted from the beginning. Overall, both strands lacked tension and the whole thing limped to a very low key conclusion.
Conclusion: While not expecting a detective similar to Bosch, I had hoped for a well-rounded, if flawed, likeable protagonist, not what is essentially a cardboard cut-out. None of the secondary characters are strong enough to leave any lasting impression.With a few, isolated instances, Nightshade reads more like a cosy mystery than Connelly’s usual tense, edge-of-the-seat writing. I’m not sure how many homicides and violent crimes one small town can cope with before the population is completely wiped out. I won’t be waiting for the second in this series with bated breath, but I will listen to it in the hope that Connelly finds another gear.
JJ Grafton 
It is a sorry state of affairs. We like what we like, but I think some should accept that they’ve done everything they can and stop. Continuing past that point is inevitably going to result in sub-standard work and disappointed, potentially-alienated, readers – and the intrusion of those elements you’ve mentioned doesn’t help. Thanks for your review and comments, Jacqui, greatly appreciated. Keep on with the audiobooks and hope you find something more to your taste. 😦
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I don’t know why WordPress has decided that I should remain anonymous.
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I don’t know why WordPress has decided to make me anonymous.
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I think one of my problems is that some (but not all) of my favourite authors in the thriller/suspense/murder mystery genres are nearly as old as myself. I had a quick Google and came up with these results.
Michael Connelly (38 books), John Connolly (over 30 books), Stephen king (65 books) James Lee Burke (40 books)
This leads me to wonder just how ‘fresh’ one’s writing can be after writing a great number of books, especially when they feature the same character over and over again.
Also, it seems that the older they get, the more their politics intrude. King and Burke are particularly prone to this. Add to this, the apparently unstoppable advance of ‘wokery’ and the suspicion of an element of AI being used nowadays and it all adds up to a very sorry state of affairs.
Since I ave been largely constrained to audiobooks, I have tended to listen to books I have already read rather than try new authors, largely due to costs. (The average cost of an audiobook is £7.99)
Maybe it’s time I broke out of my self-imposed restrictions and took a chance on some new authors.
PS. I am missing reading indie authors as very few have audiobooks and it takes me an inordinately long time to ‘read’ one.
Thank you for your comments. Food for thought.
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An honest, no-punches-pulled review, Jacqui, which is what I’ve come to expect of you. It is worrying that you seem to have read a fair few duds in recent times, which calls into question the–integrity, I suppose will do–of these popular, financially ‘successful’ authors. I’ve read enough myself to know how formulaic they can become, and I’m sure that writing under contract with a deadline to produce another can’t help. A shame, when there are good, original stories out there struggling to find readers, that traditiional publishers choose to keep on with these ‘big names’ because they’ll make money. I’ll stop now before I go off on a rant – but it really isn’t good enough. Thanks for the post.
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