Wednesday 28 August 2013

Corktown

by Ty Hutchinson
Abby Kane FBI Thriller
272 pages (ebook version) - 0.97 $
Gangkruptcy Press (January 23, 2013)
I had that book thanks to NetGalley, I found the synopsis appealing and wanted to discover Abby Kane.

Synopsis


She's short. She's feisty. She's sexy. She's Mom. Meet FBI Agent, Abby Kane.

In the quiet Corktown neighborhood of Detroit, a mutilated body has the residents nervous and for good reason. Detroit Metro Police recognize the handiwork of the serial killer known as the Doctor. But there's a problem with that. They locked him up seven years ago.

Because of her expertise with serial killers, former hotshot detective and now FBI agent, Abby Kane, is tasked with figuring out how this madman is able to kill again. When she visits The Doctor behind bars, he swears he's innocent and not the psychopath everyone thinks he is. Oddly enough, Abby believes him.

Corktown is a page-turning mystery thriller that dives headfirst into the grit of Detroit, exploring government corruption and deadly violence. Certainly a Mystery and Thriller Top 100 Must Read.

Available in ebook and paperback

What I think of it

I enjoyed Abby Kane, a (very) small, but strong character with a lot of humor, to whom the author attributes regularly thoughts or feelings rather masculine, but it works fine anyway. Abby is a character that you appreciate quickly. She obviously has some weaknesses: her size and her guilt about her children she thinks she does not take care enough. Her children are also present throughout the book (by SMS). There was even a time when we feared for their lives when they are very far from the place of the investigation, I found it good from Hutchinson.

As for the other characters, there is a choice between not very smart cops (as often where the cops have to team up with the FBI, there is always a smarter team, have you noticed?) and crooked politicians. In short, an array of characters quite well written, but with not enough depth to make you appreciate them more or feel for them. Abby is the central character and her colleague mainly serves to give her a humanity and a vulnerability which she usually does not show. This helps to make her a more credible and endearing character, she is not a GI Jane!

The atmosphere is tense, heavy, mostly due to the corruption which prevent Abby to investigate normally but she's doing it anyway. Folders are hidden, characters disappear at the right time, attempts at intimidation are made: all the elements of corruption are present. The atmosphere is tense but raised by Abby and her - sometimes - caustic humor.

The pace is fast, even when the perpetrators are known as the chase to stop them is unabated. Instead, knowing who will be the next victim, Abby and her colleagues are trying to protect them and arrest the culprits, except that - as in life - human error will ensure that things do not go as planned.

A novel that differs from what I have read, since we know very quickly who is the culprit, but the guilty shares the chapters of the book with the officers of the law. Thus we discover the investigation on both sides of the coin - through the eyes of the guilty and the forces. There are three types of chapters, according to the characters that we follow in the chapter: those where we follow the investigation through Abby (told in the first person), those where we take conscience of concealment and political corruption and finally the murders (from the point of view of the culprit). The murder scenes are quite hard boiled and sometimes disturbing. I'm used to read books in which sometimes the crime scene discovered is fairly bloody, but there the murder was live feed, it's very different!

In a nutshell

A book that reads quickly, a heroine one appreciate, a cold and heavy atmosphere, a good old duel FBI vs police: I give it a 3.5 / 5.

My thought on closing the book: not bad!

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