RR - Dead Men and Broken Hearts by Craig Russell

Dead Men And Broken Hearts by Craig Russell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Time Taken to Read - 5 days

Publisher - Quercus

Blurb from the back cover

Investigator Lennox just can't stay out of trouble. Lennox is looking for legitimate cases - anything's better than working for the Three Kings, the crime bosses who run Glasgow's underworld. So when a woman comes into his office and hires him to follow her husband, it seems the perfect case.

And, unusually for Lennox, it's legal.

But this isn't a simple case of marital infidenlity. When the people he's following start to track him, once more Lennox must draw on the violent, war-damaged part of his personality as he follow this trail of dead men and broken hearts.

My Review

This is my first encounter with this author. The main character is Lennox, private investigator turned legit, he was previously linked with Glasgows big crime bosses. His first case in the opening seems straight forward, a wife suspects something fishy going on with her husband and wants Lennox to check it out. Case number 2 is the Union looking to locate a member who has disappeared with something important and the Union want him found. Soon Lennox finds there is more to the cases than first appears and his safety and freedom may be on the line!

Lennox is quite an amusing character, some of his statements had me laughing out loud. The story itself for me seemed to take a wee bit of time to really get going. The story is build up and played out for a fair while before things really pick up. A lot of people like that but I felt it a bit slow going for the first half of the book but once things pick up it is quite interesting.

The book is set in Glasgow in the 1950s which, being from the city, I found really enjoyable as there are places I know and places I have never heard of. Twinkletoes is another character worthy of note, I haven't read any of the previous novels so I'm not sure if he has appeared before. He is a hardman, on the wrong side of the law but such an endearing character you can't help but love to read about, I would love a standalone book on him to read!

The book is filled with twists, turns, deception and secrets. The story is written in first person narrative and the chapters are fairly short which I love. Everything gets covered, explained and played out which I always enjoy in a book but I felt it took an age to get to some of it. The end has a big twist that I didn't see coming and as much as I felt the book dragged at a few parts I found myself picking it up every spare minute I had. I think I may pick this author up again and will start from the beginning. Thanks to RealReaders for giving me the chance to read a new author in exchange for an honest review, 3/5 for me this time.

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