One of Us is Dead, by Peter James - Steve
While attending a funeral, James Taylor notices a man a few rows in front of him who looks familiar. The thing is, he shouldn’t be familiar; he attended this guy’s own funeral a couple of years earlier.
With Detective Superintendent Roy Grace simultaneously investigating a number of murders that may or may not be linked, the two men’s stories seem fated to collide in dramatic fashion.
One Of Us Is Dead marks the 20th instalment in the ‘Roy Grace’ series - personally, I’d prefer to call it the ‘Dead’ series, as the word pops up in every title to date. If the titling of the individual books in the series seems a touch unimaginative, it’s unfortunate that this approach seems to extend to the writing structure.
It feels like it was written in a rush, with very little imagination invested in proceedings, and characters talking to each other in ways that real-life people don’t actually talk. It’s a shame, as the opening premise is intriguing enough to make you genuinely invested in finding out what’s happening, but the journey to get there is such a slog that by the time all is revealed, it’s hard to feel any real enthusiasm.
Peter James has quite the back catalogue - in addition to the 20 books in this series, he has managed at least the same amount outside of the series, knocked out at a rate of at least one a year. As my first experience of a Peter James book, I’m unsure whether his other books are of a similar quality or not, or if this is a one-off disappointment.
Maybe it’ll appear that I’m turning my nose up at page-turners. Page-turners are - often unfairly - derided. There is a place for them, and there have been some excellent examples, but for me personally, this wasn’t one of them.
Steve
