I picked this book up because it was rated as one of the better scarecrow-centric batman stories. Scarecrow is my favorite villain in batman, so I wanted to finally find a story that does him full justice. This comic kind of did, but not really.
First off, I loved the art style in the book. It was dark and unsaturated, with a very gritty design on the characters and locations. The scarebeast (main antagonist) felt a little out of place with its over the top design, but it was still cool to see.
The story starts off promising, with the penguin being a delightfully smarmy foil, and setting up Jonathan crane (scarecrow) for the rest of the story. I especially like the set up for Jonathan crane as being tired of just being seen as the fear gas guy, which is pretty meta considering that's most of what he's been portrayed as despite his potential.
From there, the book gets surprisingly violent and intense, almost like a mob movie. It's a nice change of pace to have batman be a detective in the organized crime area of Gotham rather than the supervillain side. Penguin stays fun to watch, and we get glimpses of crane being more than what he seems.
Unfortunately, the story dips at the end. Not only is the climax rushed and doesn't satisfyingly conclude the mystery angle, not only is the obvious twist obvious (scarecrow being the scarebeast), but it turns out that scarecrow didn't even make the choice to be the scarebeast. His assistant who had no character was the secret mastermind, and Penguin oversaw it. The ending felt like a waste of potential that it was building up, and in the end, only serves as a teaser for 'under the red hood.'
Tldr: The first 2/3 are really fun and intense, but the last third is rushed with a disappointing payoff.