This is going to be the most wanted crime thriller of 2017. It has it all. It is amusing in parts,in a dark kind of way. It has great characters, there is blood and guts, a fabulous storyline which had me on the edge of my seat and boy oh boy there are more twists and turns than a fairground waltzer.

If you love a good crime thriller then 2017 is the year for #Ragdoll
Thank you so much to the publisher and netgalley for the arc of this brilliant book xx ( )

This is going to be the most wanted crime thriller of 2017. It has it all. It is amusing in parts,in a dark kind of way. It has great characters, there is blood and guts, a fabulous storyline which had me on the edge of my seat and boy oh boy there are more twists and turns than a fairground waltzer.

If you love a good crime thriller then 2017 is the year for #Ragdoll
Thank you so much to the publisher and netgalley for the arc of this brilliant book xx ( )

Bra och spännande bok som har en härligt mörk ton. Mycket svart humor och verklighetstrogen vardagslättja. Det blir en bra balans mellan humorn och den verkliga kriminalhistorien som ligger i grunden. Mycket läsvärd. ( )

I wouldn't call this a great book, but I would call it a fun book. There are a few leaps, a few head scratching moments, but overall it is a good mystery that will have the reader guessing a bit until the reveal.

Wolf and his partner Baxter were involved in a high profile case, where Wolf fixed some of the evidence to try to bring a killer to justice. Due to Wolf's actions, the killer was set free by a judge only to be attacked by Wolf in the courtroom. After Wolf's arrest, the killer, kills again and is caught red handed, Wolf was right the whole time, but due to his own desire for justice let a killer get the best of him, so it drives him a bit crazy.

This is how the book opens. The rest of book takes place several years later. Wolf and Baxter are once again teamed up because a body has been found, but it is no ordinary body. The body is made up of several different victims with the head of the body being the killer in Wolf's high profile case. The problem is no one knows who the other victims are.

At the same time, Wolf's former wife, receives a letter with a list of victims and dates. The dates are all in the future and the victims are still currently living. On the list, at the bottom, lies one name she knows well- Wolf's.

Thus begins the story of Ragdoll. It is not only a who did it, but who was it done to? Why the first set of victims and why the next set? How will they prevent people's deaths especially when they know who will die and when? This is part of the fun of Ragdoll.

The book has such a great premise and a great narrative with some detective story tropes- the slightly insane head detective, the partners who should have gotten together but didn't, the jealous ex wife, etc. The fun of knowing who the next victims were and the police trying to save them became part of the joy of reading the book and created moments of head scratching. One particular death seemed to have needed months of planning, but only happens within hours an example is two chemicals combine and are applied in a very strange way to kill one of the victims.

All that aside, it was a fun romp. I figured out one part of the who done it fairly early, but the good news is it is not the whole story. This is a great vacation/beach read that will entertain and bring about 400 pages of fun. Enjoy the ride.

I gave this one 3.5 stars.
( )

Detective William Oliver Layton-Fawkes, whose name is a bit too pretentious, is known by his initials, WOLF, or sometimes Fawkes. As is all too common it seems, he's a good detective but flawed and a bit crazy. The book starts out with a trial of a brutal murderer he caught, and the guy manages to get off with a plea of not guilty. Fawkes goes crazy, and violently attacks the guy right there in the courtroom, and may have killed him if he had not been violently restrained. He was sent to a mental hospital, but when the murderer is caught after murdering again, he's reinstated. I don't really understand why he was suddenly not guilty of the attack, but this is in Australia, so perhaps it's OK there to attack someone you think is guilty.

So now there's a new killer, and one victim is the old killer; it seems that the victims are all related to this first killer in some way, and the killer is so brazen, he publishes a list of his next victims, along with the day he plans to kill them. The last victim is Fawkes, so he has an extra incentive to solve the murders, not that he needs one.

I got lost a few times due to the number of characters. The first crime was actually made up of numerous victims, and not all were even identified at first, so we had extra maybes. Then there are the suspects, the detectives, etc.

I had read that there was a lot of humour in the story, but I didn't really think there was very much, and what there was wasn't really laugh out loud funny, in my opinion. Perhaps I missed the jokes. But at least it wasn't overly serious except for the crimes.

The ending left a few strings untied, and I hope the next book in the series tells more about what happened after the climax. But it is complete as it is, so it's just my curiosity. ( )