Thursday, April 4, 2019

Victoria Jenkins: The Girls in the Water

In her debut novel Victoria Jenkins introduces Detective King and Constable Lane and a deadly killer:

Detective Alex King and Constable Chloe Lane are assigned to horrific murder of a woman found in the water, bound hands, fingernails missing, clear signs of torture. The victims is a woman with a troubled past but King and Lane can not find any enemies or reason for her to be targeted. Then another body is found in the water and King and Lane find a disturbing connection between the two. But Lane is distracted, she is pursuing a historical case that is personal to her and is she is not careful she could not only lose her job but her life too.

This was a good debut novel and I really appreciated Jenkins writing style. I also enjoyed that she decided to take on a lot by have two cases interwoven in the narrative. However, overall I did not have that edge of my seat feeling or thrills that I was expecting while reading this book. The mystery was well thought out and executed but just not that interesting at times, in that it seemed like it had all been done before.

I liked that it was two female officers that were partners as this is against the norm for some reason. A lot of the books that have a female detective lead are normally portrayed as not easy to work with, going against authority but don't worry they have a male counterpart to smooth things over as this is normally a male dominated profession (honestly, some of my favourite authors in this genre have this and it took this book for me to realize that). So I appreciated the fact that Jenkins had two female police officers that at one point or another are looking out for the other one and don't have the judgement against them for being female. It was also interesting to see some of the sexism that came out with regards to Lane's past.

I felt that there was a previous book to this that explained more of King and Lane's history together. You can tell throughout their conversions in this book that this is not the first case that they have worked together and while Lane may be the rookie/new recruit on the team she did not have that rookie feel to her character. Additionally, King made statements about how Lane was not up to usual professionalism which also made it appear that they had worked sometime together.

I'm going to continue on with this series as I really did enjoy King and Lane's relationship and I think that Jenkins has a great ability to tell a good mystery story I just hope there is something a bit less farther from the norm next time around.

Enjoy!!!
If You Like This,
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http://j9books.blogspot.com/2015/05/angela-marsons-silent-scream.html  https://j9books.blogspot.com/2019/03/robert-bryndza-girl-in-ice.html  http://j9books.blogspot.com/2012/05/maricia-clark-guilt-by-association.html



2 comments:

  1. It is uncommon to have a pair of female officers as the leads so I’m tempted to try this series. Thanks for sharing your thoughts

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    1. I know, it occurred to me as I was writing this review how uncommon it was. It was nice to have a different dynamic to read for once.

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