Review: Ragdoll

Ragdoll by Daniel Cole
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Trying a paid for service, which I just realized I should not yet write about and share, as it is still in Beta.
This is one of the three recommended books. Price is ok, instant ebook buy.

Fast paced page-turner, set in the UK (London mostly).
Wow, what a ride!
After a grisly find of a puzzle-like-ragdoll-staged-death consisting of body parts from several different victims, this story keeps its fast pace with a serial who leaks to the press, and sets a short timeline to stop his killings.

A lot is standard police procedure, but under very high pressure, and with several not sleeping and or not sleeping well for days on end (with the obvious problems such behaviour brings).
People and places well written, with several POV, and a few flashbacks.
Most twists I did not see coming, and a few persons are not simply black-and-white, but more a muddled morally grey, veering into being vigilant or at leas sympathetic to being vigilante.
One member of the police was doing manual data-mining during his supposed sleep or free time in going through old evidence. This felt very real, amassing lots of data, sometimes mining them with a computer, but also trying to locate and speak to every person of a large group to see wether they could offer information or simply are still alive. Although computers where used and some special programs, the large amount of work felt like a lot of old detective work, where computers only added or helped to come to some conclusions, others where simply guessworks or intuitions.

This being the first from three paid-for-recommendations, I can safely say: this one is a success, on the point for me!

Will certainly look for the sequel (this is supposed to be a series) and probably buy it soon.
Read this as an EPub and page-count was strange, so I cannot really say, how long this book is. But the short 3 days it took me to read it where mostly spent reading, with lights-out late on a few days (11:30 pm, 1 am).

A little romance thrown in, sex hinted at, but happening off-page. Very grisly murders with several scenes described en detail, not for the faint-of-heart, but not veering into SAW-material either, keeping it real and no torture.

Highly recommended, for fans of serial killers, UK-settings.

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