Deadly Intent

Quite a good story tho I still have problems reading "British" without translation.Actually liked this author enough that I've ordered her two previous novels in this series. ( )

My apologies for basing my review on an abridged audio version. It does appear that this version is severely abridged - perhaps by as much as 60% - so you are left wondering how representative it is of the original work. I suspect that quite a deal of the interplay between the characters has been omitted and some events are summarised, in other words, described rather than experienced.

I have read the 3 earlier titles in this series, just before I started this blog, and enjoyed them very much. I have put my mini-reviews at the bottom of this post.

So I was already familiar with the back story to the Anna Travis series, which included her relationship with James Langton. Although Langton does not start off being in charge of the case in DEADLY INTENT he takes charge when the original boss of the CID team has personal problems. That he sees Anna Travis as a loose cannon to be carefully guarded comes through loud and clear, and to be honest, Anna is not a good team player. She is very likely to go off impulsively on a tangent on her own, rather like a bloodhound following a faint scent.
To be fair to Anna it is her intuition that leads to connections being made, but it also highlight the fact that the team often does not do its job properly. It seems unfair though that James Langton is so willing to lay the blame at Anna's door, rather than accept the responsibility himself.

From the questions my listening partner in the car asked me, knowing the story from previous titles was important to a full understanding of DEADLY INTENT, and so this is a series that it pays to read in order. There are now 7 titles in the series.

Janet McTeer does an impressive job with the narration and the voice changes. ( )

Started as a gripping detective /who-done-it. But lost its way into a grubby romance. What started as an intelligent detective became a silly woman who I quickly lost patience with . Not really sure who did what/why at the end. Enough there though to make me want to try more of this author - maybe I'll not be so let down next time ( )

I saw the TV version of this story but still found it worth reading, even though I knew or thought I did, what happened at the end. A story of a notorious drug dealer who returns to the UK to push some stolen fentanyl to shore up finances badly hit by the bank crash and the impact on those who know him. Good undemanding holiday reading. ( )

Halfway through this book, I was thinking what a great crime fiction novel. Interesting characters, a very good plot, a mysterious bad guy that we see only in the opening pages, tension. Then the story sinks into a morass of lengthy tedious passages over timing, who drove what car, where, when,etc.; it became incredibly boring and I just wanted it to end. And it drifted away from crime fiction and became a good bit of a romance novel, with our heroine having an affair with a colleague, while still having the hots for Langton who needs her desperately but doesn't realize it of course, - and finally Anna develops a school girl crush on a a bit of scum, one of the prime suspects. The story involves Mr. Mystery Man attempting to reclaim his millions from a former partner, while getting into distribution of a new super potent drug, all with bodies dropping like flies. This is the 4th book in the series, perhaps my last. I'll certainly give it a rest before reading the next if ever. Completed 5/14, rated a generous 3 stars. ( )