I wanted to like this book. I mean, I really, really wanted to like this book. The lead character, Simon Ziele is an intriguing character, smart, compassionate and driven. He has a great backstory well worth mining for his current experience of the world: a detective who's permanently disabled when he fails to save his own fiancee from a ferry disaster, a man who's somewhat fled from the only world he's ever known to try and find some peace, only to have that world come and get him in the form of a brutal murder he's assigned to solve. So much great emotional stuff to work through as Ziele struggles to solve both the crime and what the crime could possible mean to him personally.
But...something's just missing here. It's a murder mystery, 32 chapters worth, and I had it figured out by chapter 9. I think that's probably a bad sign, even with the slight "twist" at the end, the involvement of a character I did not suspect -- but only because that character isn't mentioned for most of the book. That left me feeling cheated after I'd spent so much time frustrated that I could see what the author refused to allow Ziele to recognize.
Compounding this is the brittle, nervous fourth wall in this book, that allowed me to see the characters moving about and thinking, but prevented me from knowing how they feel -- even when the emotions are described, precisely because they are described instead of shown and shared. I wanted to be in Ziele's head and to walk alongside his heart as he began to come to terms with his loss and how that loss affected his view of himself.
But the author only allowed me to get so close before she pulled back, especially in those scenes involving male-female interactions. Almost as though she feared the outright expression of emotion might taint her story. Again and again, we're swallowed up by the motions of the mystery, even when it's not even an issue any longer.
Put it to you this way, and this is spoilery so fair warning now: Ziele gets the perp and saves the girl. Remember that he lost the first girl. This moment should be massive for him, a dreadful replay he's forced to face for the good of everyone, including himself. He failed his lover and saved a woman he barely knows. That's affecting.
And during the scene, the author glides right over this like it doesn't even matter.
This book ended up disappointing me because it didn't fulfill it's promise to itself and therefore me. I'm struggling to learn to write too, and God knows I've made some of these same mistakes. All of them, actually. I'm not posting this as a know-it-all. I'm saying, rather, that it probably takes one to know one. It's true: when you spot it, you got it. I'm just disappointed that I spotted so much so soon, when this character and this book could have been so very much more.
And because of that, I really will read Pintoff's follow-up, A Curtain Falls. Like I said, I really like the character, and characters are always what keep me reading long after the narrative doesn't give me what I think I came for. He has so much potential. And I hope Pintoff cuts loose and lets Ziele's heart run as fast as his feet.
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