Disordered Minds [Audio Download]

Interesting characters though the plot hook is not as strong as in her other novels. Some editing would have helped as the pace of the novel is quite uneven. The climax is not so much built towards as arrived at.

Although I found the two 'detective' characters appealing and interesting, the people involved in the actual murders were not made to come to life for me - like another reviewer, I didn't care whodunnit.

Another big problem was the endless repetition of the events surrounding the murder. I feel that the different versions of events could have been presented (a) more clearly and (b) in a less tedious way.

In places the characters seem to do things for no reason other than that the plot requires them to (e.g. when 'Cill' visits the agent in his home). I was never quite able to believe in any of the characters or their motivations.

In general, I find this author's books to be well written but unconvincing in terms of both plot and characters.

I'd never read a book by this author before and given all of the accolades and awards chucked at her, not to mention the hype that she is "Britain's bestselling female crime writer" I genuinely expected something brilliant.

Unfortunately that's not what I got. I was sorely disappointed in this book and I don't know if I would bother picking up something by Minette Walters again- I was so close to just giving up on this entirely. There are far better crime/thrillers out there than this- though I suppose I have to confess that I've probably been ruined in the genre as I have read the far superior Peter James, who to me, nobody else compares to!

The story is based around the possible wrongful arrest and imprisonment of a mentally retarded young man who was found guilty of murdering his grandmother in the 1970's. Three years after being sent down, the man killed himself. A renowned anthropologist re-examines the case years later and discovers that the evidence may be flawed- he suspects that the wrong person was convicted of the crime. The trouble is, the anthropologist has enough problems of his own without trying to expose a murderer as well...

The best thing I can say about this book is that the premise was interesting. However, it was poorly executed and the plot just grew too complex and to be honest, boring. I found the re-cap of the crime itself to be so utterly dull and without any modicum of suspense at all. I know it was re-capped in a `book' format from the anthropologist's point of view, but still- it read in such a technical, repetitive and turgid way that I would have skipped over that part entirely had it not been pertinent to the plot. I like my thrillers to be thrilling and I'm sorry to say, but this wasn't. It was a bit repetitive and actually, pretty predictable- also, it could have been cut in half- far, far too long.

However, I did initially find anthropologist Jonathan Hughes fairly interesting as a person- he was a bit of a complex character who I did want to know more about. Sadly, he just wasn't enough to redeem the book or my interest in this authors writing and just became a tiresome person full of a `woe is me' attitude about being of an Arabic descent in the UK. I also grew constantly irritated with the plot being overshadowed by the context of racism and for me this marred the book completely. Apologies to all Walters' fans out there, but I personally wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. It just wasn't my cup of tea at all.