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aemsea26's review against another edition
3.0
I went on a crazy mystery-reading binge this past weekend and this is only one I really remember, so I am giving it three stars. Taking place in England right after World War I, this follows the requisite damaged yet brilliant detective who is tracking down a deranged ex-soldier on a killing spree in the English countryside. This is not a spoiler, since it is pretty upfront about who the killer is, but it is still incredibly suspenseful and made me nervous on at least three occasions.
zoer03's review against another edition
5.0
marvellous this is a series I can read and read again. Good pace brilliant characters and a good indepth knowledge of how war affects everyone in different ways and that even a few years maybe even more the first world war still had an effect on people.
julieputty's review against another edition
2.0
Some pretty egregious plotting missteps and coincidences, clunky writing with a head hopping POV, a weird supernatural touch, and the dreaded Energizer Bunny evil villain effect.
pers's review against another edition
5.0
A very satisfying and engaging read. The well-rounded characters were matched by a gripping plot full of twists and turns.
graculus's review against another edition
3.0
Another bookswap book, this time the first in what I thought was a series but which may only be a trilogy?
It's the 1920's and England is still recovering from the aftermath of the War, with visible scars in the shape of missing sons and less obvious ones in terms of those who came home but left a part of themselves in the trenches. There's been a series of horrific murders, originally blamed on a robbery gone terribly wrong, but our protagonist Inspector Madden has seen those kind of wounds before, on the dead and injured of the battlefield.
Determined that this is the work of one man, a man obsessed with what happened during the War and now wielding a bayonet as his weapon of choice, Madden tries to understand what drives a man to do this kind of thing, while also getting involved with the local doctor who is equally intent on embracing life.
River of Darkness is an odd book, because it doesn't feel as though it's sure what it is - on the one hand, it's an attempt at a golden age crime novel but then there's the element of the psychopathic serial killer to deal with, since Sayers and co. don't really come across that sort of thing in such an explicit fashion. Perhaps it's this, not to mention the romantic sub-plot which seemed a bit like wish fulfillment, that left me ultimately somewhat unsatisfied and uncertain whether I'd continue with the next in the trilogy, [b:The Blood-Dimmed Tide|809500|The Blood-Dimmed Tide (Penguin Mysteries)|Rennie Airth|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178583432s/809500.jpg|1875701].
It's the 1920's and England is still recovering from the aftermath of the War, with visible scars in the shape of missing sons and less obvious ones in terms of those who came home but left a part of themselves in the trenches. There's been a series of horrific murders, originally blamed on a robbery gone terribly wrong, but our protagonist Inspector Madden has seen those kind of wounds before, on the dead and injured of the battlefield.
Determined that this is the work of one man, a man obsessed with what happened during the War and now wielding a bayonet as his weapon of choice, Madden tries to understand what drives a man to do this kind of thing, while also getting involved with the local doctor who is equally intent on embracing life.
River of Darkness is an odd book, because it doesn't feel as though it's sure what it is - on the one hand, it's an attempt at a golden age crime novel but then there's the element of the psychopathic serial killer to deal with, since Sayers and co. don't really come across that sort of thing in such an explicit fashion. Perhaps it's this, not to mention the romantic sub-plot which seemed a bit like wish fulfillment, that left me ultimately somewhat unsatisfied and uncertain whether I'd continue with the next in the trilogy, [b:The Blood-Dimmed Tide|809500|The Blood-Dimmed Tide (Penguin Mysteries)|Rennie Airth|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178583432s/809500.jpg|1875701].