Review: Close to the Bone

Close to the Bone by Stuart MacBride
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I adore all of the Logan McRae novels, each book pushing Stuart MacBride higher up on my list of favourite authors. In fact, there are only a couple of authors I rate above Stuart MacBride – and those are my cream of the crop authors. Thus, whenever I see a story with his name on the cover, I jump at the book. Any book that belongs to the Logan McRae series is grabbed even quicker. Whilst I was late joining the McRae party, I’m well and truly an adoring fan.

Close to the Bone was another fun addition to the Logan McRae series, although I didn’t enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed some of the others. In fact, at times the story seemed to really drag. Yes, there were many wonderful aspects. Everything you would expect from Stuart MacBride could be seen; however, it wasn’t quite what some of the other books happened to be.

Truthfully, I think I know what did it for me. The last few books have seen more and more of the psychologist nosing his way into things (or being pulled into things, depending upon how you look at things). I enjoy his character, I really do. There was too much of him here, though. Now many will find he adds a lot to the story – yet I found myself unable to suspend belief in the way I needed to. Well, not so much suspend belief as ignore the reality of my world. You see, I belong to the psychology department at the University of Aberdeen, thus allowing me to know how the department works. The layout of the building, the way things played out, and all the other small things meant I wasn’t as pulled into the story as I could have been. As I should have been. I found myself going ‘nope, not correct’ every time something came about which I knew the truth about. Now throughout the series I have loved reading about a city I know well – however, I found it jarring to suddenly be inside of a building I knew well, and trying to input the story into the small setting. Such a thing will not have an impact on other readers, but it was off putting for me.

Thus, I blame my lack of enjoyment on being too close to the setting.

It wasn’t just that, though. The above is an entirely personal thing, which I tried to prevent from influencing my enjoyment of the book. After all, it wasn’t as though the entire book took place inside of the building I know so well. In fact, very little happened. It’s just the thing that stuck with me most. What did influence me into viewing this as one of my least favourite in the series was how long it took me to become pulled into the story. There were times when things seemed to drag. As always, a lot was going on – and yet I wasn’t enjoying things as I usually was. I wanted to know how things came together, and yet I wasn’t crazy excited about any single aspect of the story. Some aspects were more fun than other aspects – but, as a whole, things simple were. I’m really not sure what it was: I simply wasn’t as engaged as I usually am.

There was still plenty of the usual MacBride marks to be seen: the dark humour, the interwoven stories, and the gritty crime. It just wasn’t my favourite of the series.

I’m positive, however, that I will adore the next. After all, the Logan McRae series has become one of my favourite series.

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