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Smoke and Mirrors (Brad Chen #2)

Kel Robertson

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Sep 03, 2012 Tracey rated it it was ok

Shelves: australian, 2012, fiction, crime, book-club

Okay so detective Brad Chen is dragged back to work by the double murder of a Whitlam government Minister and the editor of his political memoirs. Chen then attempts to solve the crimes whilst a whole heap of other distractions occur. Chen is not sure if the murders are due to international espionage, organised crime or simple greed.
First of all I have not read the first book in the series and though the story is not reliant on knowing the first book, it might have helped with the characters. S Okay so detective Brad Chen is dragged back to work by the double murder of a Whitlam government Minister and the editor of his political memoirs. Chen then attempts to solve the crimes whilst a whole heap of other distractions occur. Chen is not sure if the murders are due to international espionage, organised crime or simple greed.
First of all I have not read the first book in the series and though the story is not reliant on knowing the first book, it might have helped with the characters. Secondly I have a 2008 copy by Ginninderra Press.

You first come across Brad Chen viewing crime scene footage and he is watching it with Talkative and it is being filmed by Babys Arm. Problem here is I have no idea who these people are, how they are related to the main character or anything about what is going on. I have to say I was quite confused about who, what, where for the first dozen or so pages. That opening is a maze of confusion with all these nicknames being bandied about and no context.

Throughout the story I did not get a real sense of who Brad Chen is. I know he gets beaten up (alot), I know he is doing a PhD, I know he is carrying alot of baggage, but I do not know what he looks like. Chapter 8 has him standing in front of a mirror and all I get his nose is swollen, that he wears trousers and a shirt. I just do not have a picture of Brad Chen in my head. The wise cracking got thin and cliched after a while and I kept wondering when the next beating was going to happen.

The novel should have been called Red Herrings as that would have made much more sense. You were constantly just thrown red herring after red herring.

There was one scene in the book and I was like WTF as Chen tried to figure out how to pick his nose in front of a woman who he was not sure was blind or not. Did I really need to know that he had a hard bit of snot in nose that he could not dislodge, I think not.

The other thing is Chen does not solve the crime. He gets told what happened and at the point I was now banging my head against the wall. To make matters worse all these subplots that were running underneath all become resolved by Chen or someone telling us what happened. Most of the characters had disappeared five chapters before the end, so we were given the quick round up of what happened.

I was disappointed in this book, it was not that engaging and I wanted Chen to do and be more than downing painkillers, stumbling from one disaster to another and being a punching bag. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

May 03, 2011 Helen rated it really liked it

Shelves: crime, australian-author

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Shelves: crime, australian-author, giveaway, australia, game4

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