Rating: 1 star

Jo and Gemma met in yoga class and now they meet each week at a local Starbucks to discuss their lives. Gemma is very unhappy with her boss as she is slowly being replaced by an inter-office love interest. Gemma tells Jo about the slow, tortuous things she thinks up to do to her boss to make herself feel better and the two women begin to joke about the possibility.

When Jo and her semi-boyfriend, Rick, are out bowling, they have a chance meeting with Gemma and her date, Jake. Jake doesn’t say much, he just looks menacing, but Rick comes up with murder ideas that sound a just a bit serious; they even comes up with a murder club name “The Headhunters”. After a movie, when the two girls end up swapping men, Gemma begins to date Rick and Jo seems taken with the quiet, mute Jake. Upon a very painful one-sided conversation Jo finds out that Jake lives in Selsey by the water where she occasionally takes walks. In the hopes of running into Jake, Jo goes to the beach and stumbles upon a woman’s half-naked, dead body; it will be the first of three. Enter CID inspector Henrietta “Hen” Mallin who will lead the murder investigation.

This book accomplished what so many others have threatened to do – make me stop reading it. The very British Peter Lovesey has chosen to write in a very British way, using lots of British slang and jargon, which basically means it’s very dry and painful to read if you’re American. The dialogue was like watching paint dry, only less fun. I found my reading slowing down to a crawl because the story and style was so plodding. Now, I’m not saying all British writers are like this, they’re not. I’ve read British chick lit that was actually pretty funny and fast moving. This story moved about as fast as a sack of dead frogs. The characters were quite boring and nondescript. Please don’t get me started on Jake; whenever the dialogue included him it was nothing short of painful, he spoke in one word answers and when he tried to string two or more words together, it was mentally draining.

Although I had not read other Peter Lovesey books, the consensus is this is not his best work. Mr. Lovesey has won Silver, Gold and Diamond Dagger awards for his writing – I would have settled for a rusty one to end the pain.

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Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Soho Crime (April 1, 2008)
ISBN-13: 978-1569474907