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A review by ayami
Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic
3.0
Audiobook read by Lewis Fitz-Gerald (The narration pace was smooth and the audio was well edited - no sounds of swallowing, inhaling etc.)
I can see why this crime/thriller got so many awards in Australia.
1. The protagonist is interesting. Caleb is a private investigator, what is not always easy for him, as he is also deaf and manages his interactions with other people by reading lips. I enjoyed how we got to see the events from his perspective, his struggle and frustrations. He also gets a nice arc within the book - by the end he will become less proud and bitter than he was in the beginning. He will even consider therapy (even though “he is a man and men don’t need therapy”). Quite satisfying.
2. There’s a lot of strong and interesting female characters with agency. Caleb’s partner, Frankie, is a recovering addict in her 50s. Caleb’s ex-wife is an Aboriginal Australian woman still recovering from her miscarriages. We get to spend plenty of time with both women and they are fully realized, three dimensional characters. Nice!
3. None of the characters are black-and-white. They all have their flaws, they are still working through their problems, they all have their past. They are all believable. Promising!
Unfortunately, no amount of exceptional characters can save the non-existing plot.
The stakes are very high from the very beginning, people are dying left and right (brutally murdered!), but, and here is the problem for me, our protagonist hardly does any “detecting” at all. He is basically stumbling from one life-threatening event to the next, while losing his phone, looking for his phone, looking at phone records, thinking about phone messages, discovering important evidence on his phone, losing his phone charger and, finally, sending a life-saving phone message. By the end, after suffering through all this phone-related drama I really did not care about the twist, about who the bad guys and their motivations were or anything else case-related. Which is a shame, because “the case” and who/why/how is usually what I enjoy the most in a crime novel.
It turns out a book can be both too exciting and too boring at the same time. Won’t be continuing with the series.
I can see why this crime/thriller got so many awards in Australia.
1. The protagonist is interesting. Caleb is a private investigator, what is not always easy for him, as he is also deaf and manages his interactions with other people by reading lips. I enjoyed how we got to see the events from his perspective, his struggle and frustrations. He also gets a nice arc within the book - by the end he will become less proud and bitter than he was in the beginning. He will even consider therapy (even though “he is a man and men don’t need therapy”). Quite satisfying.
2. There’s a lot of strong and interesting female characters with agency. Caleb’s partner, Frankie, is a recovering addict in her 50s. Caleb’s ex-wife is an Aboriginal Australian woman still recovering from her miscarriages. We get to spend plenty of time with both women and they are fully realized, three dimensional characters. Nice!
3. None of the characters are black-and-white. They all have their flaws, they are still working through their problems, they all have their past. They are all believable. Promising!
Unfortunately, no amount of exceptional characters can save the non-existing plot.
The stakes are very high from the very beginning, people are dying left and right (brutally murdered!), but, and here is the problem for me, our protagonist hardly does any “detecting” at all. He is basically stumbling from one life-threatening event to the next, while losing his phone, looking for his phone, looking at phone records, thinking about phone messages, discovering important evidence on his phone, losing his phone charger and, finally, sending a life-saving phone message. By the end, after suffering through all this phone-related drama I really did not care about the twist, about who the bad guys and their motivations were or anything else case-related. Which is a shame, because “the case” and who/why/how is usually what I enjoy the most in a crime novel.
It turns out a book can be both too exciting and too boring at the same time. Won’t be continuing with the series.