A TASTE FOR BLOOD – David Stuart Davies

This is one of the oldest books in my ARC queue and was requested at a time when I was requesting everything in the hopes that I’d be approved for something. I did not know that it was a part of a longer series. But all that aside, I don’t think you need to read the previous five books in the Johnny One-Eye Detective series to appreciate the story … though you might want to after reading this.

Johnny “One-Eye” Hawke is a private investigator and is currently looking in to a suicide that just doesn’t feel right. A police detective friend of his, David Llewellyn, is investigating a bloody crime involving an escaped convict and a psychiatrist. These appear to be separate, parallel stories until Hawke manages to come to a realization about his friend. The cases do teases us as coming together once in a while, but author Davies manages to keep us on our toes.

The book is set during WWII era and I’m not quite sure why. I tend to like historical fiction, but nothing about the era mattered to the story. In fact I found it a bit of distraction because it read pretty modern and then something would pop up from the era and I’d be thrown off for a moment.

The book is well-written and the mystery is very intriguing. The last few chapters had me on the edge of my seat. They were also somewhat gruesome in expectation of a nasty killing.

On the one hand, this is very much the sort of hard mystery you might want to read (if you enjoy mysteries with a bite). It’s well-written, with interesting characters, and a plot that keeps you paying attention. On the other hand, there is nothing really very spectacular here. It’s a good story but not one that I will look back on and want to read again. It is what I consider beach fare or an airplane read … something to keep me occupied and entertained (I find reading to be entertaining) and not much more.

In that sense, then, this is a perfectly average read.

Looking for a good book? A Taste for Blood by David Stuart Davies is a good hard mystery that won’t leave you longing for more but will entertain fans of the genre.