Backlash by Lynda La Plante

Backlash by Lynda La Plante
Mystery

Henry Oates is pulled over for driving suspiciously when the police find a body of a young woman in the back of his car. He's brought in to the station where he is questioned and admits to two additional murders. DCI Mike Lewis takes over the investigation, though when DCS Langton learns that one of the suspected victims is a young girl that he investigated the disappearance of, he also assigns DCI Anna Travis to the case. Oates recants his admission, stating it was just a joke to get their attention. Lewis and Travis start digging through the files to figure out if they can trap Oates in a lie and determined what really happened to the missing girls.

This is the 8th or so book in the series and I found that this book doesn't entirely stand on its own. I was missing a lot of back story on Langton and Travis to help me figure out what kind of people they really were. Langton seemed angry all the time. I couldn't understand what Travis could see in him or why she would continue to put up with his demands. At the same time, Travis seemed to have no personality. I think the previous seven books would have helped ease me in to the characters because from just this book, I liked DCI Mike Lewis the best and he wasn't even a main character. This could also be the reason why I felt like the ending was forced in the exchange between Travis and Langton, because I don't know enough about the characters to understand why that happened.

This book isn't the usual who-done-it that you get with mysteries as there has already been an admission of guilt. I found myself waiting for the other shoe to drop and a big twist to be revealed. There were twists but they all came at the end of the book rather than spaced out to keep you anticipating what would happen next.

Overall, I think this book suffered from not explaining the characters well enough to new readers to the series, and lack of excitement through the majority of the book.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for letting me be part of this tour.

First Line: "Quite night so far, isn't it?"

Rating:
(3/5)