Stav Sherez

C'est magnifique! Stav Sherez never, ever disappoints...it's the fourth book I read by him, and the second in the Carrigan-Miller series, and wow...you don't see it coming, you really don't. Won't spoil it and leave you to discover what happens (we have the usual gruesome parts that we all have learnt to love in his books, and the mix with religion in the story which is peculiar for the way it is woven in), but will say that much that the cliffhanger we're left with makes me wish I could have the next book in the series right now on my bedside table to continue reading.
I guess I will have to be a bit patient there...… (más)

Don't you love a book that scares the hell out of you, and still you can't put it down and keep on reading? Are you wondering whether taping shut the camera on your laptop, because, now you've read the book, you can never be sure that the camera is really not working?
What a rollercoaster...Stav Sherez has done it again, and delivered a third chapter in the story of one of my favourite detectives on paper that now makes me hope he has already started the fourth volume. Because, seriously, I do need another Carrigan & Miller fix soon.
There's a certain something about Sherez' prosa...love the musical references (always welcome, just my cup of tea!), and the way he describes those dark and decayed corners of London with a lyrical touch to it.
Go. Get the book now, and happy reading :)… (más)

My first Carrigan & Miller, and I've enjoyed meeting them.

Police procedural double-act, with credible, sympathetic, flawed characters following various leads towards suitably shocking if slightly less credible conclusion.

Sherez is ambitious: we have Eastern European drug barons, Peruvian politics of the 1970s, and the Catholic church at its most devious (though, thankfully, we are spared the by now traditional conspiracy theory). He is also, in places, a memorably good phrase-maker (though he is pleased enough with one or two of his best that he can't resist using them again).

Carrigan leads the case down some not entirely blind alleys, and everything does connect, though not always in the way he (or we) first thought. His mistakes - and his acknowledgement of them - help to flesh out his character and the murky world of morally grey indistinction in which he works.

Relationships between the characters, too, are handled with subtlety and maturity. Many times the reader is relieved that the author manages at the last moment to avoid the apparently imminent cliche.… (más)