Snared
By: Ed James
Rating: 4.5 of 5
While Ed James has written a number of books, “Snared” is the first of his books that I have read. It is a stand-alone book; however, I think that it has the potential to be the start of a police procedural series set in Scotland about DS Vicky Dobbs.
Vicky is a single mom of a four year old girl. She is juggling her hectic personal life with the increasing demands of her profession. She is having issues about not spending enough time with her daughter (though her mother and father are around to give her an excellent backstop) when a series of escalating crimes start.The book is quite long at close 544 pages. It makes sense if it is the start of a series as the book introduces a great number of characters. If it is truly a stand-alone book, there were a few more characters than necessary.
It was absolutely a police procedural in that it went into a lot of the day to day meetings and other average activities that a police officer would deal with. For some reason, the author chose to break the book into many chapters and additionally divide it by day. For me, when an author uses the day by day division, I expect there to be a time sensitive issue but this is not the case in “Snared”. It appears to be used to show us the daily breakdown of what goes on at a police state during an investigation – more of a tracking of the case than as a plot device to heighten tension.
The crimes involved deal with animal welfare and terrorism against some individuals who have been called out in the press for abusing or misusing animals in some way. While I didn’t agree with or condone what the victims had done previously, the vigilantes were not presented in a favorable light. I think the point was to merely watch how the police tracked and solved the crime without being pointed to one side or the other as the “right” of it.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher, Thomas & Mercer, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.
While Ed James has written a number of books, “Snared” is the first of his books that I have read. It is a stand-alone book; however, I think that it has the potential to be the start of a police procedural series set in Scotland about DS Vicky Dobbs.