Review: Crossbones Yard

Crossbones Yard by Kate Rhodes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For my birthday a friend bought me the second Alice Quentin book, A Killing of Angels, thus making it necessary for me to hunt down Crossbones Yard in the library. Although I could have entered A Killing of Angels as a standalone novel, I’m well aware that part of the fun of crime series is following the characters as they develop across books. With how intriguing A Killing of Angels sounded, I was curious about what Crossbones Yard would deliver.

If I’m being honest, my feelings towards Crossbones Yard are rather mixed. It was interesting enough, I was willing to keep turning the pages to see how everything came together, but I was not as invested in the story as I would have liked to be. The reason is twofold – the predictability of the story and my inability to connect with the characters.

The predictability element I could deal with. I often work out who is behind the crime when reading crime fiction. It’s why I do not read such stories as much as I used to, despite crime being one of my favourite genres. I’ve reached the point where the mystery is very rarely a mystery, and I stick to authors I know will surprise me. Therefore, when I worked out who the bad guy was early on in Crossbones Yard I was hoping I was wrong, yet I was not at all surprised when my assumption was confirmed. There were plenty of red herrings thrown in to keep me interested, even if they did not catch me off guard, and that is why I was able to deal with the predictability of this one.

My inability to connect with the characters was more difficult to overcome. There were times when the story did interest me, yet we became so focused upon the drama of the characters and I really didn’t care. There was the potential for interesting elements – as I stated, following characters as they develop throughout series is one of my favourite things with crime books and it’s why I prefer to enter a series at the start so I can follow all the drama – yet I found myself unable to care about what was happening with this book. I felt as though there was too much, with nothing being given the depth it deserved.

I’ll certainly be giving A Killing of Angels a read, as I own the book, but I’m unsure as to whether I will continue beyond the second book with this series.

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