Saturday Slaughters: Lillia's Diary

...and it's by someone called Ian McFadyen, although that information will possibly be superfluous by the time you get to the bottom of the post.

I managed to pick up my reserved copy of this the day the library closed. Given that the book groups have of necessity been closed with it, in a way there wasn't much point, but there again presumably we'll discuss it when normal life restarts so I was glad I had managed to source it. And it's kept me occupied for a wee while. 

I have to say that the plot was generally good; there was an unusual storyline connected to an Eastern European, not just the usual lazy stuff you get when Eastern Europeans are included in crime novels these days. 

There was however a hole in the plot that you could drive a tank through. I'm sorry but with all the crime dramas, crime novels and true crime programs available these days, no publisher should allow an author to get away with this sort of thing: to wit, one police officer keeps someone talking downstairs in his own home, while another officer goes upstairs, conducts an illegal search and takes away without telling the owner a piece of property (the titular diary as it happens) which becomes central to the case. No police officer worth his salt would do that, because that's a dropped prosecution right there. 

I say no publisher, in places this is so clunkily written that I thought it must have been self published by someone whose grasp of the English tense system was tenuous to say the least. I was surprised to see that it did have a publisher but not surprised to see, when I looked it up, that it's one of these 'partnership publishing' outfits, so self publishing by any other name. It had certainly never been anywhere near an editor - but that is sadly common these days even with reputable publishing houses and well established authors.

It was apparently the second book in a series, but I shan't be rushing out to find number one, nor shall I, unless obliged, keep an eye out for number three.