Daily Archive

I sometimes worry that in the highly unlikely event that I became a suspect in a murder case the police would turn up chez Bride, look at the number of books (both fiction and non-fiction) that I have about serial killers and huckle me off immediately, convinced they had me bang to rights.

And The Calling is another one of those. Set in Canada, a country for which I have had a fascination bordering on obsession since I was quite small (I may have mentioned this before), its the story of a series of murders which are only connected when our heroine, for it is a she, DI Hazel Micallef, spots a link and there’s a race against time (as always) to catch the killer before he strikes again.

I’m a bit ambivalent about this one, and not entirely sure why. I read it on holiday and the setting and all-round grimness jarred a bit with the warm Italian sunshine – though it didn’t stop me cracking through the story. I thought the conceit behind the murders was quite clever, and the killer himself interesting in his motivations, I like Hazel in many ways, sympathising with her back pain and her having to share a home with her mother, but she was also pretty irritating at times – the thing with her ex-husband I could understand I suppose but if I’d been the second wife I would probably have been unable to resist smacking her one.

It is not at all bad but I will admit after a a couple of months that I struggled a bit to remember the details but it was good to read at the time. I may give the next one in the series a try, but not just yet.