Vladimir Lopez Rondon Lopez Rondon itibaren Fleuriel, France itibaren Fleuriel, France

It was a pretty good book that I read for my summer reading, and I can say I enjoyed it, but I only gave it four stars as I myself prefer books with a bit of a faster pace. However, it described characters and settings and so on it such great detail that sometimes I would be reading the book, and suddenly go into a sort of trance, and then find myseflf several pages ahead, but not really have read the words, instead sort of, "absorbed" them. I was a bit peeved by the fact that there were no significant female characters in the book. My favorite character was the Mole, and I liked the Rat, and Badger almost as much. The only character I can say I truly disliked at one point or another, was Toad. I will admit that sometimes he was fairly likable, but often times in the book he was selfish, stubborn, conceited, thoughtless, and completely blind to simple common sense, even what he is doing is harmful to himself and those around him. One of the main reasons I liked this book was that it shared some similarities with the Redwall series, which I fell in love with, and finished all 21 books in the series in less than six months. If there was one thing I could do with this book, it would be to make it a bit more exiting, and not seem so much like the whole thing is just the essence of a lazy summer afternoon. But no matter what I say, I like the book much more than I am probably expressing.

This book is worth a read. I'd recommend it for something light for a plane journey or perhaps a boredom-buster on holiday. It has lots of mini-stories and intertwined relationships between the MANY characters who we have narration for. It is, at times, hard to keep up with who's who, but it does get easier and narrowed down as the story progresses (thanks, in the most part, to all the killings!). I don't think the novel is as deep and shocking as I expected it to be and actually guessed pretty early on in the story what the two big 'twists' were (baby and who the killer was). I also don't think it's fair to class it in the same league as the thrill-tastic Karin Slaughter, as per the blurb (haven't read any Tess Gerristen yet, but on my to-do list); it's more hairy house-spider than Black Widow. I also think that the prose was a little sloppy in places, like when the characters had to keep mentioning things in conversation which the other character they were talking to would have known all about but we, the audience, wouldn't, so they would have to give a strange, unrealistic, advertisement-esque description after mentioning it so we were up to speed too, e.g.: "...I'll get the door. It could be FedEx delivering my birthday present." Catherine smiled indulgently. "We just ordered that new set of golf clubs two days ago..." Things like that grate on me. This book is the first I've read of this series or, indeed, from Ms. Barton and I think that the quality is good enough for a series continuation. The side-plot doesn't really develop at all throughout Silent Killer and I'm assuming, as others have, that it makes sense to people who devoutly follow the series. These two things considered prevented me rating it any higher; even though it is a series continuation and the side-plot is probably a 'gift' to the fans I think the quality could have been a great deal higher as a novel in itself, as I have read from authors of other series novels. Worth a read, a page-turner, but more tea and biscuits than chocolate fudge cake.