The voice of the late middle-aged hard boiled detective in this novel was one of the best I've read in a very long time. I was sucked into this story and couldn't escape until I'd read it from cover to cover. I felt as though I was living and breathing alongside the characters. The voice of the late middle-aged hard boiled detective in this novel was one of the best I've read in a very long time. I was sucked into this story and couldn't escape until I'd read it from cover to cover. I felt as though I was living and breathing alongside the chief protagonist.

Why two lost stars? One was the strange plot twist regarding the villain at the end. It wasn't a case of not noticing the breadcrumbs and going 'yes ... of course.' The villain came out of the blue with no warning. I hate that. When a villain suddenly steps out of the shadows from amongst the red herrings, I want to be able to slap myself on the head and say 'but of course!' This book was otherwise too well-written to get away with such a misstep. And then there was a magical line (literally) throughout the novel where the supernatural was an integral part of the story, but it was always handled with a sense of disbelief. Kind of like the X-files where a few people knew, but most people ignored its existence. The ending caused the story to cross too far over that line into magical fairy land (which would have been okay if this had been a fantasy story, not a detective novel with a paranormal element).

The second lost star [*spoiler alert*] was the sudden transformation at the end. If I wanted to read a YA novel, I'd have BOUGHT a YA novel. It would have been better to transform the younger detective into a prodigy and launched a separate series with HIM as the protagonist, with his own voice. ( )