Starvation Lake

A DCI Sean Bracken Crime Thriller, Book 1

By: John Carson

Narrated by: Angus King

Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

A brand-new series from the creator of the DCI Harry McNeil and DI Frank Miller novels. Here comes DCI Sean Bracken.

A killer on the loose.

A killer behind bars.

And a detective caught between them...

Ailsa Connolly was a brilliant psychologist and a respected criminologist.

She was also a serial killer.

Six years ago, DCI Sean Bracken caught her just before he was about to become her seventh victim. Every year on the anniversary of her incarceration, she taunts him with a phone call, giving him one message: "When I get out, I'll kill you."

Now, Bracken has transferred back to Edinburgh from Fife and is thrown into the deep end on his first day back on duty.

There's a killer who is emulating Ailsa, threatening to surpass her body count.

Bracken knows he needs her on board to help him track the killer down, but she's reluctant to get involved.

Then the case takes an unexpected twist, and she agrees to help. But this new killer is taking them down a dark, twisted path, where nobody sees the outcome.

Until it's too late.

©2020 John Carson (P)2022 John Carson

Fair knockoff

Okay story, although character development is shallow. Plot moves along fine, and then just falls off at the end like the author had to get the book to the publisher the next morning and tried to wrap it up in a few pages. My biggest issue with the book is the STRIKING character and plot similarities to Kirk’s DCI Logan series. Walking a thin line and barely stayed on this side of plagiarism IMO.
But at least there was solid narration by Angus King.

Seemed very familiar

The story had good characters and all, but nothing new and some well-worn plot themes. Yawn.

Can't finish

Angus King is my favorite narrator, but even he can't save the inane dialogue. Maybe it is an interesting story, but any time there are more than a couple lines exchanged between the characters, I was cringing at how boring and unrealistic it was.

just 1

The author struggled mightly, plot is interesting but by the last chapter so many characters
were added to wind up this murder mystery I am
going to listen to the last part of the book to figure out what happened.

Disappointment

I love the narration of Angus King, but this story was terrible. There was little to no actual detecting, people kept jumping to conclusions without evidence, and the characters were incredibly unprofessional.

Cringe-y dialogue and no character development

I bought this book purely for Angus King's narration, which is fantastic as usual. The book is very similar to JD Kirk's DCI Jack Logan series, to the point I wondered if the author had tried to copy that formula (brash copper, witty female love interest, slightly older friend...) But where Kirk is excellent at character development and his dialogue has me laughing out loud at times, this book left me cringing. The author writes female characters like he knows he has to include them but doesn't know anything about them, or really like them very much. He described one character as "slim, but someone who looks like they try really hard at it". ? He'll mention that a character is female, for absolutely no reason ("Bracken was waved through by the female constable"), like he's trying to meet a minimum quota of female characters. There's zero character development, the dialogue is awkward and not the least bit funny. Its like listening in on a bad first date. I really wanted to know what happened so I sped up the narration to hurry up and get to the end, and frankly it was anti-climactic, a bit confusing, and I wish I'd just ditched the book after the first chapter. Save your time and money and skip this one.