Spoiler Discussion (Oct 2019) Group Read - A Litter of Bones by J.D. Kirk

[Pat]

A Litter of Bones
(DCI Logan Crime Thrillers #1)
by J.D. Kirk

This novel was too violent and the hero too macho for me to choose it as my normal reading. Yet I began reading it late at night and finished it about dawn of the same day. Did I want to read it in one great gulp? No. I had planned to read a chapter as a prelude to sleep. Did I enjoy reading it? No. The threat level to a child was too high and sustained for me to find pleasure in the plot line.

Was it well written? For the most part. The plot was so suspenseful I couldn’t sleep until I knew the outcome; the characters were sketches of types you’ve met before. The main character Jack was too fixated on proving himself strong and right to appeal to me, yet I found his flaws typical of his personality type. No lengths were too far for him to go to achieve his goal; the means didn’t matter once he identified the desired end.

Perhaps it wasn’t wholly realistic for so determined a personality to have as much support and freedom from superiors as he received. This caveat comes to mind in looking back at the full cooperation he also received from unfamiliar staff assigned to Jack in north Scotland, Glasgow, because of previous work on a case with similarities.

This book enters your consciousness like a hurricane, stripping the story to essentials, flinging you from scene to scene, leaving you with little time to react to the fury of the pace. You hang on desperately from page to page, and only after completing the book and catching your breath do you later question the story, its people and a few of the writing techniques.

While actually reading, I was too deeply involved to think about character relationship hints, what worked or didn’t, what seemed reasonable or not. For example, I later wondered who the boy was who dissected cats alive and deposited them in the street for other children to find or on the kidnapped boy to share suffering? What happened to him at the book’s ending? How did he fit into the relationship that formed the spine of the story?

A Litter of Bones is gritty, violent, horrifying, gripping, disturbing. Do I recommend it? For those who prefer a tale soaked in testosterone, an action tome where the hero stoically ignores his bleeding wounds to get on with the chase, have at it. You might meet it again on a TV or movie screen one day.