This was a challenging book for me. It took three tries to get past the first 50 pages and in some ways, I struggled through the whole thing. I now feel like, "That was well-worth reading but thank God it's over!"

What I did like: the characterization. I very much liked the detective and his female partner. The (oh, so many) characters were individualized and believable. Their actions followed from their characters and so the plot was logical. It's amazing to me how James wound up so many loose ends of a very complex plot, and that I felt satisfied with the resolution. And the book did have meaning. For a mystery, that's impressive.

But it was tedious. Something about the style (or plot, or theme?) irked me and made it difficult to digest. I'm having trouble putting my finger on it. Maybe the characterization was actually overdone. Or again, maybe there were just too many characters, all of whom were real, fully fleshed-out people that I had to process. I usually skim descriptive prose but James made me really visualize everything and that was exhausting (while impressive). The theme was very dark but that usually doesn't bother me. It was intense from beginning to end...again, usually something I like, but here it felt like too much. I think it was too long but I don't know what I would cut.

I would recommend trying this author if you like mysteries and want something deeper than pulp fiction. I will probably try one more just to see if my problem was this particular plot.