Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
More brilliance from Jardine, 9 Jan 2006
I found Quintin Jardine by accident - his book was in a set of 10 in a well-known book shop. As I hadn't read any of the authors in the box-set I bought it hoping to expand my bookcase, and am damm glad I did. Jardine is a brilliant writer (I'm not going to compare him to Rankin as I haven't read any Rankin, and to compare him to someone else would be to miss the point of how good Jardine is), and is the kind of book you can pick up and read cover to cover without having to decipher any police jargon, or wonder 'who that was' and 'what was their point in all this?' As this was the first 'Skinner' series I read, it was good that you can pick up who the characters are without having to buy the previous books to figure out who's who. 'Skinner' is portrayed as good at his job, as otherwise what would be the point in writing about him? Fiction is escapism, however 'Skinner' isn't stretched too far so as to be unbelievable. A delightful read, one that made me buy more 'Skinner' books.
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4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Skinner - the Scottish Jack Ryan, 2 May 2002
By A Customer
I stumbled by accident upon the Skinner books, and 'Skinners trail' happens to be the first that I've read. As I come from Edinburgh, I looked forward to it. More so having finished off the whole series of Rebus novels.
Well, while the story line is interesting enough to have you picking it up for that half hour before your eyes close in bed, Skinner himself is a surprisingly irritating character. Irritating in his perfection......as stated above, he's a crack shot, perfect father with the world's most perfect and intelligent baby, wonderful husband, and your run of the mill hard-but-fair super cop.
Even more irritating is his even MORE perfect wife. Mother of the year, beautiful, sexy, intensely loyal wife, a professor of pathology that could teach Quincy everything he knew twice, and crime solver on top of it all.
The likeness to the clotting and sicklyness of the Ryan family in Tom Clancy's novels is startling. They're all perfect down to their sparkly white teeth.
This lets the Skinner story down big time...the plot is believeable, but the characters are from a children's fairy tale.
Give me the doubt, fears and weaknesses of Rebus everytime.
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2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Boring Edinburgh cop caper , no match for Rankin, 14 April 2001
Dont't buy this book if you think it will be anything like Ian Rankin's Rebus series. The plot is average fare, but the "hero" Skinner is so unbelievable one-dimensional that I struggled to finish this book. He's a real tough guy that everyone respects, beautiful pathologist wife, karate master, crack shot, yawn, yawn. It's a book you would only read for it's irritation value - e.g. nearly every chapter finishes with a "!".
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