Cuts Through Bone: A Mystery by Alaric Hunt

Book: Cuts Through Bone: A Mystery
 
Author: Alaric Hunt
 
Narrator (if applicable):n/a

Release date (if applicable): Published

Synopsis: From Amazon.com

At first, Rachel Vasquez found her new job working for private detective Clayton Guthrie promising. He got her a gun and a license and took her to target practice. But lately she’s just been doing surveillance, and it’s not her idea of an exciting time. She is contemplating quitting when Guthrie lands an intriguing case that will take all their wits and guts to solve.

Camille Bowman, a beautiful blond Columbia student and Manhattan heiress, is found dead, shot by a gun that belonged to her fiancé Greg Olsen, an Afghan war veteran. Guthrie is hired to prove Olsen’s innocence, and fortunately he thinks Olsen smells clean. The detectives return to the scene of the crime where they see a vagrant who claims he heard the shots and picked the girl’s wallet. Tiring of their questions, the vagrant flees, and Vasquez and Guthrie must track a man who’s an expert at disappearing while also butting heads with the NYPD, cracking doors at Columbia University, and crawling through the city's subterranean tunnels.

To complicate matters, the murder could be part of a spree of killings being called the Barbiedoll murders, in which women are killed for no apparent reason and with no suspect in sight. The NYPD would like to pin them all on Olsen, and his life will depend on Guthrie and Vasquez catching the real culprit. In a race against time, the detectives gather clues that culminate in a bloody chase of one very determined and surprising killer. 

My rating: 3 Stars on Amazon/Goodreads. Realistically, more like 2.5 stars
 
My opinion: I could BARELY warm up to this book. This was a very short book that should have realistically taken me less than a day to read, but it ended up taking me several days to read it. I agree with other reviewers who have stated they felt they were reading a Phillip Marlow story because of the language choices that the author used, as well as the fact that it was very heavily laden with cliches, innuendos and "cheeky" language. If not Phillip Marlowe, one could compare it with the cheesy movies of the 1970's. 

Source:   St. Martin's Press

     

Would I recommend? : No
 
Stand Alone or Part of a Series:  Stand Alone