gvancott

I really enjoyed Standing in Another Man's Grave. I have been on a reading kick for the last 18 months and several new books have recently appeared for series I had already finished. This was the first one that lived up to my expectations. I prefer books that have signficant female characters and the Malcolm Fox books did not.

The TV version of Case Histories was the start of my current reading kick that began about 18 months ago. I thought the TV show improved some aspects of the book except for introducing a supernatural element. I thought Case Histories was the best of the four JB books. To me they went downhill after that and the the forth one, which doesn't have nearly enough Jackson Brodie in it, was the worst. I found some of the author's female characters to be unsympathetic, especially in the second and fourth books.

While I am a major fan of mysteries set in the UK, I have come to the conclusion that I don't much care for PD James. I don't care for the puzzle mystery format and there seems to be very little character development of the police characters, especially Dagliesh. I prefer Reginald Hill (shame he died without finishing off the series), Ian Rankin and most recently Stephen Booth.

I have read all of the books from this series which have been published in English and are available in the US (the Lost Boy isn't available here yet, unfortunately). I have enjoyed them very much, however, I think Läckberg wrote herself into a bit of a corner in The Hidden Child and the earlier books which describe Erika's mother. I can't imagine how a woman with the issues she had would have ever gotten married.