Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Average, 21 Oct 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
I took over a week to finish this as I kept losing interest in the story, not good for a thriller. The thoughts of the lead character were repetative, and dull. I`m sure it was character building but once you have the idea, second time re-enforces the idea, but the fourth and fifth are tedious. I wouldnt read another by this author.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very good, 27 Aug 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
You can find your detective thriller setting all over the world these days - recently I have read thrillers set in Italy, Malta, Scotland, the USA (obviously), the Middle East, England and now Spain. From those books, often the setting is merely a device, an attempt to differentiate, but here Robert Wilson creates a vivid picture of Seville and Spain. I had missed out on the Falcon series, so it was a bit of a mixed blessing to read the last of the series first, if you see what I mean.
This is a terrific book, written well enough to satisfy those looking for literary merit, but with a visceral edge to the action that will keep you turning the page. For me a believable plot is paramount, and Wilson doesn't disappoint. If you want to know the premise of the story, you can read the Amazon "blurb" but suffice to say, there are plotlines involving Russian gansgsters, terrorists and corruption all running concurrently, all handled and drawn together superbly by the end.
The only problem for me was that I had missed out on the earlier books, as I feel that I missed some of the elements of characterisation as a result - that is not a fault of the book, however, more a personal thing. I can thoroughly recommend this to lovers of detective fiction, and I will certainly be seeking out the previous books in the series.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Complex thriller; police procedural meets anti-terrorist espionage, 8 April 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
This is a thoroughly modern crime novel, mixing the themes of a European police procedural with undercover agents fighting international terrorism. There are several plots which overlap and entangle the protagonist, Inspector Falcon, in many investigations at once -- and several of them are personally important to him.
There is a lot of back story to soak up and absorb, and although the various plot threads were adequately explained and re-examined, I probably would have enjoyed The Ignorance of Blood more if I'd read the previous three installments, and had established a bond with the pivotal characters. The story veers between rival Russian mafia gangs, an undercover agent who has infiltrated an Islamic terror cell, civic corruption on a grand scale, drug-running, prostitution, slavery and exploitation, blackmail, murder, kidnapping and extortion, and it involves a multitude of crime agencies including the Seville police, the Spanish intelligence service, the CIA, MI5 and a host of other groups. You need to be quick on the uptake to remember who works for whom, and which group is on which side...
But at the core of the story there's a very human investigator, an interesting character who seeks to uncover the truth about his ex-wife's murder, protect his best friend, convict the culprits of a major terrorist attack, find personal redemption with a new partner and keep the Russian mafia from taking over altogether.
Falcon is the core of the story; every scene revolves around him. This means we uncover the truth as he does, but there's also a fair amount of time spent in meetings, re-capping on who has gone where and found what, which is a necessary device to keep the multitude of plotlines untangled, but slows the action somewhat. I also felt somewhat disconnected from the other characters in the novel: Falcon is the only fully developed personality. The rest are mainly bit-players, seen through his eyes, relevant only as they advance the story or impact on his emotions and actions. So although I enjoyed the intellectual challenge of keeping up with all the threads of this book, and was definitely gripped by some of the cliff-hanger moments in the plot, it didn't involve me 100% in the outcome. Took a while to finish; I wasn't tempted to sit up late at night.
So while you can read The Ignorance of Blood as a stand-alone, I'd recommend trying the first in the series to fully appreciate the satisfaction of its resolution in this final chapter.
8/10
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