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The Innocent and the Dead

DI Jack Knox, Book 1

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The Innocent and the Dead

By: Robert McNeill
Narrated by: David Monteath
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About this listen

One woman found dead. Another kidnapped. Two cases. One overworked Scottish detective. The Innocent and the Dead is the first in the DI Jack Knox series and comes with the prequel story 'Labyrinth'.

DI Jack Knox is called in to investigate a high-profile case. A local distiller’s daughter has gone missing, and when he receives a ransom note, his fears that it is a kidnapping are confirmed. Knox decides to take a serious risk to capture the abductors, but the stakes could not be higher. The father is wealthy and well-connected. If Knox’s gamble goes wrong, he’ll have hell to pay.

Meanwhile in the prequel story, 'Labyrinth', the body of an attractive young woman is found in woodland on Edinburgh’s iconic Calton Hill. Knox will have to cut through the lies of the people who knew her in order to establish a motive and collar the killer.

©2019 Robert B. McNeill (P)2020 W. F. Howes Ltd Crime Fiction Suspense Thriller & Suspense Fiction Crime Disappearance
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Feel like it’s written for a five year old, everything explained so much, so nice, inoffensive!

Ugh! No nuance whatsoever!

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I was hoping the DI Knox series would be good, but Book 1 (including a prequel) has proved disappointing. I don’t intend to buy more in the series and am abandoning this one at Chapter 3. Although David Monteith gives his usual capable narration (the voices of the two leading officers clearly echoing DCI Daley and DS Brian Scott) he cant make up for one dimensional characters, staid writing, and a boring plot.

The characters are wooden and unlovable, and they speak with unbelievable formality. Even a murderer admitting to the crime does so in the most stilted language, and the police officers are unfailingly calm and polite. Not credible at all. None of the characters are easy to like, and DI Knox is far too old and boring to really have a 20 something young detective as his lover. That’s not credible either.

The plots are pedestrian. I had worked out the identity of the murderer in the prequel long before the police did, and it was utterly predictable, as well as disappointingly stereotypical.

If you want compelling Scottish crime writing, try the DCI Jack Logan series, the Logan MacRae series, or anything by Doug Johnston. This one isn’t worth the credit or the listening hours.

Tedious and dull

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