Review: Close to Death (Hawthorne & Horowitz, #5)

Gaby Meares

I got to page 271, of 419 and decided I wasn’t wasting any more of my precious time on this book. It is way too long, and I found I just didn’t really care about the mystery. The usual banter between Hawthorne and Horowitz isn’t zinging in this book, because they spend virtually no time together. And I came across a really obvious error, that shouldn’t have slipped past the keeper: at the scene of the second death, while Hawthorne is looking at the body still in situ, the police officer informs him that the victim had taken an overdose of sleeping pills, and ’there was about a quarter of a bottle of Scotch in his bloodstream’. How could they possibly know that before the pathologist had run all their tests? Anyone who watches crime tv or reads crime novels knows they are forever waiting for the toxicology results after the autopsy - this body was barely cold and still where it was found!
I felt this was written in a hurry, and the results are not great. Disappointing.