I liked parts of this book very much. I could see every scene clearly in my mind, so I got a free trip to Scotland, and England too. For me that's worth the time it took to read right there.

The detective had a good back story, but her frequent idiotic choices were annoying to me. "Gee, I don't know this scruffy dude who is a murder suspect, but, sure, I'll ride with him and go to visit his druggy friend's tumbledown house. What could go wrong?" Etc.

The plot, in some ways, ended up not making much sense--okay, so this is how they do this to the bodies, but the reason why is never really explained. It seems a rather long and risky process for so little reward. I mean, as far as we know every single body has still been identified afterward.

Our heroine proves to be far too difficult to kill to be a normal human being, so I am assuming she is one of Rasputin's long lost relatives or something. And yet, despite being unkillable, she still is unable to rescue herself and needs the cavalry, which did at least come in an unexpected form.

The religious cult was more of a plot device than anything else, and as a doll collector and maker I found it annoying that there was never a nice clear description of even one of their dolls! Not to mention no reference to their actual religious beliefs. Apparently they believe in seclusion and *SPOILERS* and.....? What are the chants even about? We are given no words or summaries.

Despite all of this and more, I could hardly put this book down, but when I finished it I gave my unfortunate, nearby relatives a lecture on what I will do differently when I write my own mystery novel. I actually would read another book by this same author, because I did feel there was a lot of promise in the writing and detective, but if another proved to be equally annoying, I would not try any more. ( )

The end wasn't great. The book was okay and kept most of my interest. ( )