Mark Dickens

I found this book disappointing. There were several structural issues I had with the approach the authors took. I can understand making the narrative focus of the story on the UCOs rather than on the suspect as a way of changing up the pace and format, but there's a reason that's the default-it's because it works. Centering it on the UCOs means you have a larger cast of characters to keep track of and meant that it turned into a series of vignettes rather than a cohesive narrative. Additionally, the chapters tended to be short (sometimes down to 3-4 pages on my e-Reader) and hard to get into due to that. However, after going through most of the story in that way, we then get two chapters alone that are basically half the book and cover in entirely too much detail the verdict from the judge on all the counts charged against the main suspect and his wife. It felt completely unnecessary and mostly seemed to be there to inflate the book length.

The writing was fine, I didn't hate the book or the writing, and it was interesting to learn about how undercover police operations work in Britain, but I also didn't feel like the story was terribly well told.… (altro)