This is my second John Saul book, and the second John Saul book where I've been pleasantly surprised by the fact that they're not as bad as I thought they'd be. This book opens with the murder and SA of an 11 year old child, which made me very nervous about the content of the rest of the book, but it luckily comes up very little in the book itself and it's never treated voyeuristically, which occasionally happens with this. 

I did side-eye, however, the man who beat his daughter so badly that she then suffered from life-long mental health issues and trauma so strong that it caused her to become mute, who was let off with a "oh you were drunk so it's okay ndb really the real victim here is you" sort of attitude. 

Anyway, the book was fine. It was entertaining, though occasionally veered sharply in directions I was less than thrilled about. Overall, it was okay-ish.