This is one of those situations where a book that sounds great on paper turns out to have, in fact, nothing going for it except its synopsis. A (female) private investigator is charged with tracking down the missing teenage granddaughter of a client, and in order to do so, enlists the help of a terrifying piece of (female) debt collection muscle known as The Hyena.
Having written that, the synopsis sounds terrible too – I think I mostly liked that all the main characters were women, and one of them (The Hyena) was a lesbian. Heaven knows we need more non-supporting female roles in the thriller genre, but it would help if they were good and/or interesting. The protagonist, Lucie, is basically good at nothing, and even though she works at a private detective agency, there are evidently no resources there to assist her in recovering a missing person, because she has to ask another woman who she’s never even met for help. The Hyena is a strangely idealised character endowed with unbeatable strength and quasi-telepathic intuition, while also being an almost offensively stereotypical lesbian who is constantly dropping hints about what straight girls are missing out on. This is the entire content of her character. When the two travel to Spain together, the Hyena drags Lucie off to stay at a friend’s house, the living room of which becomes literally the site of a pre-planned mostly-female orgy without any word of warning to the unsuspecting guest. Has this ever actually happened? Has any person failed to say to a house-guest, “oh, by the way, if you’d be bothered about unknowingly walking into the middle of some strangers having group sex, maybe plan to be out this afternoon”? I don’t know, maybe my life’s been more sheltered than I realised, but I’d like to think that most of my acquaintances would at least drop a hint or two.
Generally, in a mystery-slash-thriller novel, the payoff is undoubtedly the conclusion. We find out whodunnit (or if we already know who dunnit, the hero does/does not foil a plot at the last minute), all the threads are wrapped up and red herrings exposed, we get a good night’s sleep. I don’t want to resort to spoilers here, but suffice it to say that there’s a denouement which is fairly unsatisfying, followed by a “resolution” that defies belief. I did not believe a single word of the last chapter-and-a-bit. In summary, a boring book full of badly-written characters doing unlikely things, followed by an unrewarding conclusion. Do not read.