leighelse reviewed Exile by Denise Mina
Review of 'Exile' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
I enjoyed the first Denise Mina book I'd read, "Garnethill", and rated it highly. I looked forward to "Exile", but was greatly disappointed.
The characters seemed to be trying and failing to recapture the dynamics of the first book, and plot development fell repeatedly into "lazy author" territory. While "Garnethill" presented me with a young woman struggling, with some success, to escape the consequences of parental abuse, I could not bring together the two disparate parts of Maureen in "Exile": the sleazy alcoholic evidently unable to make good decisions; and the sensitive, insightful investigator capable of drawing information from unwilling interviewees. Additionally, both the Scottish and English police behaved both lazily and incompetently throughout "Exile", a dead weight on the story rather than contributors to its progress.
I'm prepared to give the third book in the series a look, but if "Resolution" doesn't in some measure improve on "Exile", then …
I enjoyed the first Denise Mina book I'd read, "Garnethill", and rated it highly. I looked forward to "Exile", but was greatly disappointed.
The characters seemed to be trying and failing to recapture the dynamics of the first book, and plot development fell repeatedly into "lazy author" territory. While "Garnethill" presented me with a young woman struggling, with some success, to escape the consequences of parental abuse, I could not bring together the two disparate parts of Maureen in "Exile": the sleazy alcoholic evidently unable to make good decisions; and the sensitive, insightful investigator capable of drawing information from unwilling interviewees. Additionally, both the Scottish and English police behaved both lazily and incompetently throughout "Exile", a dead weight on the story rather than contributors to its progress.
I'm prepared to give the third book in the series a look, but if "Resolution" doesn't in some measure improve on "Exile", then Denise Mina will not only be my most promising author of 2018, but also my most disappointing.
