Hello Bookdragons!
Look who’s back from hiatus! Me, of course. As you all know I had taken a break from social media and blogging due to my exams. Thankfully, all my papers went well and I am satisfied with what I wrote. About the grades and marks, I am not sure but I tried my best from my end. Please wish me luck for me t results! 🙈
Before I forget, Happy New Year to all of you! May you all conquer your TBRs, add more books to your TBRs and reach your reading goals 💜.
Once again I have been very lucky to be a part of a blog tour organised by Midas PR. What’s even better is that the book I’ll be sharing with you all today is from one of my favourite genres – Mystery/Thriller.
I began 2020 with Lucie Whitehouse’s Critical Incidents and I wasn’t disappointed in the least. Keep reading to know what I thought about the book 😊
Detective Inspector Robin Lyons is going home.
Dismissed for misconduct from the Met’s Homicide Command after refusing to follow orders, unable to pay her bills (or hold down a relationship), she has no choice but to take her teenage daughter Lennie and move back in with her parents in the city she thought she’d escaped forever at 18.
In Birmingham, sharing a bunkbed with Lennie and navigating the stormy relationship with her mother, Robin works as a benefit-fraud investigator – to the delight of those wanting to see her cut down to size.
Only Corinna, her best friend of 20 years, seems happy to have Robin back. But when Corinna’s family is engulfed by violence and her missing husband becomes a murder suspect, Robin can’t bear to stand idly by as the police investigate. Can she trust them to find the truth of what happened? And why does it bother her so much that the officer in charge is her ex-boyfriend – the love of her teenage life?
As Robin launches her own unofficial investigation and realises there may be a link to the disappearance of a young woman, she starts to wonder how well we can really know the people we love – and how far any of us will go to protect our own.
Usually when I read mystery or thrillers, most of them tends to get right to the point of action and everything becomes pretty clear in the initial pages but with Critical Incidents, I can’t say the same. Now, I don’t have any problem with slow burns where the plot builds up till the middle of the book which is when the actual mystery becomes clear.
With Detective Robin Lyons at the center of the story, several other sub-plots are connected to her story. At the beginning of the story we find Robin in Brimingham visiting her family with her daughter Lennie. After reading the first few pages, I could feel Robin’s strained relationship with her family members especially after she has been sacked from her job at Met. She is accused of letting an alleged criminal go and of not following her department’s order.
Robin later decides to work with a Private Investigator because she has been dumped with way too many bills and not enough food on the table for her family. Despite the uncountable number of characters who breezes through the story, Robin’s presence never diminishes. One can feel her constant presence in the novel partly because of her strong character sketch and partly because of the realistic nature of events.
Amidst the number of sub-plots, the main plotline concerns itself with the “critical incident” of Corrina, Robin’s best friend of 20 years and her missing husband. As she has been dismissed from Met and can’t investigate the case, she sets out to investigate on her own. Robin also investigates other cases which plays a major role in connecting all the incidents and thrusts the final action in the intended direction.
What seemed unique to me about the novel is that all the cases are strewn across the story haphazardly and doesn’t make sense for the most part, but it all slowly comes together to form an union of “critical incidents” which ultimately gives rise to the final confrontation. Critical Incidents is one of those novels that leaves the readers clueless and keeps one guessing about what would happen next. The concluding part of the book really did a number on me! I dived into the Critical Incidents without any expectations and I was utterly surprised with the way the novel ended.
The narrative flows smoothly and the “English” tone becomes apparent with the usage of certain words and phrases that is unique to British English. One thing that I did have a trouble to keep up with are the characters. There are a lot of them and I literally had to note them down so that I wouldn’t be confused. Having a lot of characters is not a bad thing at all, it only adds to the realistic nature of a book. However, I would definitely advise you to note down the characters, if you were to read the novel.
It’s been a while since I read a good mystery/thriller and I am so happy that I got the chance to read Critical Incidents. The novel also subtly deals with women’s issues both in professional and personal lives which I loved.
If you are someone who loves slow burners and murder mysteries or detective novels, I would definitely recommend that you add Critical Incidents to your TBR.
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What’s the best Crime Thriller or Murder mystery novel you read?
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Signing off,
Sohinee Reads & Reviews 
Best of luck for the “result”…
this book seems interesting, mystery/thriller has always attracted me.
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Thank you so much! Hope you get to read the book soon 🙂
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