Ok, I'm done with everything that's released in the US so far for this series.
Its been a 3 months journey with this series, and sadly to say, its not over yet. The author says there's at least another 5 years (real time) of stories for this series, and its popular enough that the publisher probably doesn't want him to end it either. I don't blame either as hits are far and hard to come by, so if you can milk it, you should..especially if you still enjoy what you're doing.
So to this point, the main plot points have not really advanced much, there's been inches here and there, but nothing that materially changes the game. The pattern is still about 3 non-plot point cases to 1 plot point case, although if someone did a page count, they might find that the page count for non-plot points vs plot point cases are not quite 3:1, but it feels that way to me. =)
The author's even added more characters, as if there wasn't enough characters in the first place...but I guess one must have variety in life.
I wish the series could have been over by now, and I kinda regret picking it up, but also not enough to ding that by more than one star. The cases are still relatively interesting to read even if the author's given up on making it reader solvable since my last review at the midway point.
I'd say pick up this series only if you really like mysteries, and can tolerate some drama in between.
The drawing's good, the writing's not bad, it gets very same-old same-old by the 1/4 point, so past that point you're just reading to see how the progression of the characters happen, and they don't. they're archetypes and archetypes cannot change. So you're just seeing how they relate to each other, and..honestly nothing there changes either. Who the characters like don't change, no matter what, and no one important dies.
Seen in this light, maybe I should ding another star, but this is pulp. you're reading for fun. =). so 3.5 stars and we'll call it even ok? =). Oh, you can't set 0.5 stars in goodreads, so 4 stars it is.