| Product: |
Die for Me - Karen Rose |
| Date: |
27/04/08 (117 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: well written and paced, believable characters
Disadvantages: could be alittle long for some people
After discovering Karen Rose by reading Count to Ten I seem to have been finding her books all over the place, Die For Me is the latest and was found in Tesco when I wasnt meant to have been buying books (although to be fair at the moment I'm never meant to be buying them), and this went straight to the top of my to read pile.
The first chapter introduces us to Warren, a young man who has aspirations of fame through modelling and acting, sadly for him these plans are never going to come to fruition in his lifetime, his killer remains a mystery, Warren knows him as Ed Munch. Munch hired him to film a documentary so why would he now want to kill him.
Detective's Ciccotelli and Lawrence have been called to the site of a grave, found in a remote field by the owner who was out metal dectecting it is clearly not meant to be there. Trouble is its a big field, how many more graves could be here and why would someone dig them in advance?
Vito Ciccotelli is finding himself buried under a pile of family issues, as well as this mulitple murder case and is still dealing with his grief after the death of his previous girlfriend Andrea, this simply is not a good time to fall for someone else.
Sophie Johannsen, formely a field Archaeologist is now curator of a small family museum, The Albright. She hates some of the work she has to do there like dressing up as a tour guide, and her boss Theodore Albright 3rd wont let her just get on with it. But this job at least allows her to use her knowledge and experience and remain local to her Grandmothers hospital. Her past experiences have taught her that within the limited field of archaeology one mistake can cost you a lifetime of gossip and rumour, maybe life at the Albright can help her escape this even briefly.
Where has oRo got its new games designer from, the scenes he wrote for their last game made it their best seller and hopes are high for the game in progress 'Inquisitor' but where does he get his inspriation.
I felt that unlike Count to Ten the characters felt alittle more fleshed out, there were still holes in their back stories but nothing that felt necessary, or realistic we all have things we simply dont discuss dont we?
Rose still managed to weave together a well told crime story and a fairly realistic love story though however well written the second does feel slightly 'by numbers' as its a storyline which features in her other work as well. The main storyline as with other books of hers I have read takes several leaps which are seemingly random but dont feel completely ridiculous. I didnt find it quite so compelling a read though I did want to keep on turning the pages I just wasnt as lost in the story as I was Count to Ten so it took me a couple of evenings to read this one.
Though each book features different main characters there are some which cross over from other books in this for example Tess and Vito have previously been featured in You Cant Hide, and some of the more peripheral characters are due to feature in the next book Scream For Me, this provides an element of continuity between the books while allowing Rose to develop characters further, presumably to allow her to return to them in the future without risking her readers getting bored of them.
At almost 700 pages long it is a very long book, but due to the way it is written I didnt feel that its was a hardship keeping up with what had gone before as you often do with longer books. My copy contains bits of extra material, a short interview and suggestions for a book group discussion on it, as well as the first chapter of the next book. As always I bought my copy from Asda in their 3 for £10 deal, but it is available on Amazon and Greenmetropolis (£3, and £3.75 respectively though on Greemetropolis postage is included).
Summary: Id prefer not to die for anyone, but this is worth a read.
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