Review: Prime Suspect

Prime Suspect by Lynda La Plante
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Prime Suspect is one of those television shows I see so often, yet never watch. Why? I’m not sure why, but the knowledge of there being a series of books left me wanting to read the books instead. After all, the television series is really popular and so is Lynda La Plante as an author. In my mind, reading the books was a better choice.

Unfortunately, Prime Suspect was not what I had expected it to be. It wasn’t terrible, but at the same time it wasn’t great either.

It took me quite some time to get into this one, and I can come up with many possible reasons for this. I tried to read it whilst travelling – something that can be a bit of hit and miss for me. I was travelling late in the day and into the night. I was distracted by what was going on around me. I was tired. I put the book down and picked it up more than once. Although I have many reasons why I may have found it difficult to get into this one, I think they’re mostly just excuses. I wanted to enjoy this one, I wanted to be sucked in straight away, but I wasn’t – and due to this, I tried to find reasons why I wasn’t able to get into the book without pointing fingers at the story.

I think there are actually a number of real reasons as to why I couldn’t get into the book. For starters, the prose. It wasn’t the worst writing ever, but it did not flow as well as I thought it would. I’ve read other reviews where they say this is a reflection of Lynda La Plante being a screenwriter, and I can see where such people are coming from. The bigger issue, however, is that the story jumped around a lot. Chapters were cut into many different scenes, meaning you would move between people a lot before any solid information was given. It was rather distracting. Underlying this, I just expected so much more – having heard so many good things I had set my standards rather high.

One other thing that really hit me is how dated this book seems. Things that were said, behaviours of characters, were really dated. The endless sexism, in particular, really grated on me. I understand it was trying to send a message, was trying to create a feminist icon – but it did not come across that way. Some books do transcend time, but I do not feel as though this will ever be one of them.

Whilst I did have issues with the book, I was interested enough to read until the end. It was somewhat different than other crime novels, in that it is trying to find evidence of who was behind the crime rather than searching out the individual. It is not something you see all that often, and it was something different to enjoy.

Although I did not enjoy this book as much as I had hoped, and it will never enter my list of favourite crime novels, I’m glad I finally gave it a read.

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