The Hanged Man by Simon Kernick

Posted on October 19, 2017 by Tauricrafter

From bestselling author, Simon Kernick, comes the thrilling second instalment in The Bone Field series. Featuring DI Ray Mason and PI Tina Boyd

Description

A house deep in the countryside where the remains of seven unidentified women have just been discovered.

A cop ready to risk everything in the hunt for their killers.

A man who has seen the murders and is now on the run in fear of his life.

So begins the race to track down this witness before the killers do.

For Ray Mason and PI Tina Boyd, the road ahead is a dangerous one, with bodies and betrayal at every turn…

Review

Thank you to Century and Arrow Publishers via NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was quite good in the main, it had all the usual mix – anti-hero copper, bad guys doing awful stuff you wanted stopping and police unable even with all the resources they have to put the bad guys away. I was glad to see that whilst issues around insufficient resources were aired it was not overdone and indeed accepted that the police had by and large sufficient capabilities but that the criminals also had a lot of resources indeed resources even within the police force. There was more than an implication that the police have their hands tied at times because of rules/regulations/law preventing them from pursuing certain courses of action.

This book is in the crime fiction thriller genre. It built up the story pretty well and it did have action and tension especially towards the end. I don’t know if it was because I had not read the first book in the series, although other writers don’t stop this from being an issue, but I felt Ray Mason was unlovable and not in a good way, especially as he was one of the main narrators, and the anti-hero that we are supposed to love, aren’t we? Tina Boyd was easier to relate to but her role seemed relatively small; Dan, oh dear – the straight copper, by the book, marriage broken because of his own inability to control his personal proclivities – something of a cliché character in the end, although he didn’t have to be. The baddies seemed better drawn. However, all of this I could have gotten through but for the final action from Ray. I got it, I just didn’t like it.

This book had such potential and I didn’t hate it even though I had not read #1 I could engage with the storyline, just not all of the execution or all of the characters. You may enjoy this more, especially if you have read The Bone Field.

Rating: 3* Just about.

Information

For more information on Century & Arrow, follow @Arrowpublishing on Twitter or visit http://www.randomhouse.co.uk

Century and Arrow are part of the Penguin Random House group found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

The first 15 novels are standalone stories, although there are recurring characters. Simon’s latest thriller, The Bone Field, is the first in his first ever crime series, with the next instalment, The Hanged Man, due to be published in November 2017.

ISBN 9781780894478 (Hardback). ISBN 9781780894485 (Trade Paperback)

Publisher: Arrow (5 April 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1784752266
ISBN-13: 978-1784752262

Author:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/features/2017/may/simon-kernick-series-graphic/