Title: Bad Blood (Detective Jack Brody Book 4)
Author: J.M. O'Rourke
Published: July 30, 2023
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Fresh off his last tumultuous case, Jack Brody is called to a Dublin hotel to catch a trio running a honeypot scheme. He thought this case would be an in-and-out deal, but details told by the trio reveal a more sinister crime.
In the same hotel a woman is having a one-night stand with a man she realizes is unstable and potentially dangerous. After a very violent sexual night, she is shot at point-blank range.
Jack Brody and his eclectic crew of policemen and women need to figure out who the mysterious man is and his connection between this crime and similar crimes throughout the EU involving bank robberies.
I have mixed feelings about this book. I finished it in a day but I needed a couple of days to decide if I even liked it. The story has so much potential, but to me, it fell flat.
While reading there were many times I had to stop and check to make sure I didn't accidentally go back several chapters - the scenes were identical. It was confusing and unoriginal. I could skip those scenes and feel like I didn't miss a thing since I had already read scenes similar in the previous chapters.
As a reader, I found the usage of Irish slang detracted from my overall reading experience. While I don't advocate for its complete removal, I would suggest using it more sparingly. Removing it entirely would diminish the already limited character personalities, but for those unfamiliar with Irish slang (like myself), it can be perplexing to grasp the intended meaning of their conversations.
In the book, there were numerous scenes and characters that seemed unnecessary and served no purpose for the overall story. Two blaring examples that come to mind are the journalist from a previous book and the boxing scenes.
The journalist had no purpose to be in the novel - her POV scenes were all about how she wants to get back into the "journaling game" and how she is constantly following Jack to get "the big story". Her brief backstory was she took a sabbatical after her terrifying experience at the hands of a serial killer (this happens in one of the previous 3 books). She had zero use or relevancy until the VERY end of the novel where she tells Jack where the bad guy took his coworker. THAT'S IT. Anybody on the scene could have told Jack where his coworker was taken, it didn't need to be the journalist.
The boxing scenes I feel were word filler so the author could have a long enough novel. The scenes were mostly showing this white power racist kid that he's not better than the black athlete. The racist kid had to end up hiding rocks in his boxing gloves so his punches would hurt more. The two scenes were to show people that we're not better than anybody else and that most kids are a product of their environments. Once again these had NOTHING to do with the overall plot.
What I did like about this book were the scenes from the killer's POV. In the beginning you think he's a fairly normal criminal, a little weird, but not strange. The farther along in the novel, the more unhinged his scenes become.
One aspect of the book that I truly enjoyed were the scenes from the killer's point of view. Initially, he appeared to be a somewhat ordinary criminal, albeit with some peculiarities. However, as the story progressed, his perspectives grew increasingly unhinged and unsettling, which to me, is the only reason this novel didn't get below a 2-star review.
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