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Dying Light

Author: Stuart Macbride
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

36 reviews
Sales Rank: 134287

Media: Hardcover
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.7

ISBN: 0007193157
EAN: 9780007193158
ASIN: 0007193157

Publication Date: May 2, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: We ship daily from the United Kingdom

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 6-10 of 36

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Best book I have read like this since early Rebus February 17, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

My Dad gave me this, and before starting, my expectations were fairly low as I hadn't heard of Stuart MacBride. Having a read over the back cover, it sounded like a Aberdeen version of Rebus... and to be honest it turned out like that. Early Rebus though - the real hard-core stories. I immensely enjoyed this book, from the characters, to the whodunnit, the twists and turns. I found myself entirely engrossed.
Without giving much away, one encounter between DI Insch and a local doctor about the time of death of a suspect was achingly funny. Just ordered the next one!!

3 out of 5 stars

Not as strong as expected February 10, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

There are very many positive reviews of this book and few which rate it negatively. My expectations were therefore high.

I found the first few hundred pages to be very slow (of the `....and then he went to eat a burger....' variety), although the last third or so is quite fast-moving as DS Logan McRae and his colleagues try to wrap up a few crimes. Logan is flawed but very likeable.

But this is basically a police procedural, set in Aberdeen, with some pretty nasty crimes, and language to match, both of which provide some realism. But none of the crimes are complex enough to really challenge the police and lift the level of intrigue for the reader.

The writing is unexceptional but there are some good witty lines in the mix.

In summary, this was an easy read, but certainly not worth writing home about. 7/10

2 out of 5 stars

Is it just me? February 7, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

It must be. The characterisation just gets on my nerves! Every single mention of Steele comes with a nocotine-stained reminder just as Insch is always having a jelly baby. That's it! As for grit and brutality, there's a bit but not enough to make up for the clunky, slow plotting and the wearisome DI Logan. Was there ever a wetter hero? The final third of the book is more fast-moving and involving than the start but that's not really saying much. I stayed with it to the end...but won't be buying the next in the series.

4 out of 5 stars

Great Read February 2, 2008
This is the first book i have read by thei author and i loved it! he sets the pace well and controlls the tension well throughout, only giving you just enough information to keep you moving with the story. Strong characters, gripping read.

4 out of 5 stars

Arson's for gimps January 29, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

If there's one thing harder then getting your first book published, it's writing the follow-up. A year earlier MacBride enjoyed deserved success with his debut novel COLD GRANITE and he has understandably stuck to a broadly similar theme with this, the second in what we can only assume is a series built around leading man DS Logan McRae. It's good, but it's not radically different from its predecessor. In fact, I thought it was pretty much par for the course but it was uplifted by a better-than-average and satisfying ending.

MacBride relies heavily (and wisely) upon his character creations and in this respect it is probably his greatest strength. We see a lot less of the rather large DI Insch this time round, mainly because McRae has been internally 'demoted' to the less then highly regarded team fronted by a chain-smoking lesbian in the name of DI Roberta Steel. Personally I thought the most amusing aspects of Steel's character had already been used up in the previous novel, and that she has fewer surprises to offer in order to carry this novel as would have been the case with the equally colourful but more credible DI Insch. And some of the often very funny humour that made the debut novel such a success was thinner on the ground throughout this latest tale; a pity, because it is possibly MacBride's second-best skill after his characterisations. It's still funny in places, it's just that there are fewer places. The story itself isn't, in my humble opinion, the most memorable in modern crime fiction but it's always authentic and there's next to no glamourisation of either the crimes, the criminals or the various people whose job it is to hunt them down and capture them. My overall impression before I reached the conclusion was that this was a rather-too-long account of police procedure but when I did read the final pages my impression was lifted; I like stories where there is a degree of ambiguity in the ending, when the reader has to either work things out or simply wonder what actually happened. I generally dislike 'twee' endings in which all the questions are answered in black and white.

It's too late to change the style now, but I do wish that the author could have separated his often 'colourful' language from the words of his characters and the narrative text. Had the story been written in the first person, i.e. from Logan's perspective, it would have made more sense, but as it's third-person all the way I feel that there should have been a change in style to the narrative which did not include any of the raw language for which Aberdeen is apparently well known.