A superb volume, continuing to follow the hard-working detectives of Gotham City Police Department's Major Crimes Unit (the only one, it is implied, with an organisational reputation for having no corruption, each member being hand-picked by the now retired James Gordon). A short and cute one-shot story about the receptionist and Bat-Signal-wielder aside, the book is taken up by three larger investigations -- each utterly different from the other, except in that they are dark, gritty and engaging. The first story is a thriller where a mysterious sniper assassin keeps killing Gotham officials in the days before Christmas, and the police are at their wits end to stop the next one from happening. The second has a female accountant turn up dead in a dumpster, creating an investigative chain of events that sees us follow six different detectives (in partnered groups of two) over the course of three days to figure out how and why she ended up there. The third story is the best in my eyes (which is saying something), where an unexpected public suicide cause two detectives to re-open an 8 year old case about a school bombing, once belonging to the disgraced former cop Harvey Bullock.

If you like crime noir and think a dash of Batman's fantastic rogues gallery at unpredictable intervals sounds like a great additional ingredient, "Gotham Central" is about as good as it gets. ( )

Brubaker and Rucka's second go at the Gotham Central premise is just as good as -- possibly even better than -- their first.

"Daydreams and Believers" is a fun little character one-shot about Stacy, the MCU secretary in charge of operating the Bat-Signal, and is a nice, surprising bright spot in the collection.

"Soft Targets", the first arc in the book, is just incredible -- my favorite Gotham Central story so far, and probably one of my favorite Joker stories. I don't want to give away too much (you can probably guess a lot just from the cover of the collection), but it's a great story, with plenty of twists and turns, backroom politics, and a satisfying noir climax.

"Life Is Full Of Disappointments" is the weak point of the collection -- the premise is interesting enough (a case is passed amongst several different partnerships in the MCU, each of them uncovering more clues than the last), but it just feels disjointed and confusing. This is also the only portion of the collection where the superhero/supervillain angle to the story feels tacked on instead of a natural part (The Huntress shows up for a brief conversation).

"Unresolved" more than makes up for this, however, as it's another great story (a man from one of the detectives' pasts resurfaces, literally in the midst of a hostage situation) which also has some great twists to it.

Overall, it's a spectacular collection. Michael Lark's art (I think I might have incorrectly pinned this on Greg Rucka last time - I am a fool, etc.) is still muddy but improves considerably here. (His naturalistic Joker is a true terror in Soft Targets). Highly recommended. ( )

liked it, but somewhat less than the first book ( )

The best story is the Joker one, but the first one with the woman and Batman isn't bad either. ( )

It's rare that a TPB will contain only strong story arcs, yet this one pull it off, and without being a superhero book! Makes you wonder about all those great stories we cold get if DC and Marvel weren't so dead set to force their writers to write only for their super-hero books. So, a gem, simply a gem. ( )