Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsGreat writing, disturbing content
Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2020
For fans of the "old" Anita Blake, the one where she solved crimes more than she had sex, this is a great transitional book for Ms. Hamilton to move away from the relationship- and vampire-politics-based writing that's dominated most of her recent novels. Additionally, the writing was first rate. Tight in a way I hadn't even known I'd been missing. Every chapter ends with a punch (no pun intended) something quotable, something memorable. I just can't stress how much I enjoyed the level of writing in this book. Maybe if I mention that towards the end I found a typo and it threw me out of the story in a very jarring way will illustrate how deeply I'd fallen into the story, because typos always throw me out of a story, but this was the only one I noticed.
That said, I found some of the content problematic. Not in the way that prudes would, not in the violence and killing part that most people might object to, but in the way that it so clearly illustrates the myth of "only a few bad apples" in the "rest of the cops are good" barrel.
I think it will come as no surprise at all that Laurell K. Hamilton would "back the blue" to the extent that she does, whether intentionally or not, it comes through that she truly believes we are safer with the police than without them. I give her credit that she also shows that the justice system as a whole is flawed and in need of change, also that it seems like every change seems to just make a new problem rather than solving everything.
No, the problem I had was that it applies an unnecessary justification for good cops covering for the dangerous faults of bad ones. There will of necessity be a SPOILER in my reasoning, so here's your:
SPOILER ALERT!!!!
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When Anita rolls the dancer at the strip joint, she doesn't do it on purpose, but without a literal (in the literal sense of the word) Deus ex machina stepping in to save her (and the innocent dancer) with a literal miracle from God, then she'd have rolled that woman to the same extent that she'd rolled Nicky and others. She'd have taken the rest of her free will and life from her. I don't believe she'd have just dumped her, but she'd have irrevocably changed her life and made her a slave.
And Newman never even questioned whether or not he should cover for her, because that's just what cops do for one another.
It did help somewhat that the Captain of the locals did hold his one deputy accountable for attempted murder, or at least keep him in jail as a lesson, but we all know that he never intended to actually charge him, because he didn't charge him at any point. Again, good cops cover for bad cops and handle things like this internally, and we're all just supposed to accept that the way they decide it should be handled is okay when sometimes innocent lives were lost and most of them don't even end up losing their jobs.
The only reason I didn't take a star off for that is because I realized that this has happened in one way or another in most of her books, but it never bothered me before. Taking a star from a good, hard-working writer for something that I only now realized about my own self seems just too hypocritical.
So, I gave it 5 stars because the writing was great, and the story moved back towards, not a better direction, necessarily, but the direction that hooked me on the books to start with.
