Wanted to like it more, the gimmicks frustrated me.
I've read every DI Fawley book and I've always enjoyed them. I'm starting to think of these books as a bit of guilty pleasure. However, I'm limited to reading on the Kindle which means the medium which I read is rather specific.
Hunter will (as in: has also done in the past books) sandwich in content from different sources to give the story a bit more reach out into the world. I remember the earlier books would have tweets (and I think reddit threads, maybe) which would be between chapters (chapters being dedicated to telling one of the characters story and perspective).
The problem with the inserts is that on a Kindle these are actually images that are embedded, and trying to read the text in them, because the text doesn't scale, means zooming, and attempting to drag the image around, usually to read from one side of a sentence to the other.
This time around I just skipped them entirely - some of these included newspaper articles. I've no idea if they added anything to the story, if they contained plot points, or if they were decoration (more akin to the tweets in the earlier books). It's just too hard to get the text.
And then there's the perspective change with a font change. I use the Open Dyslexia font set at a size that helps me to read. This book then employed a completely different font for when the antagonist shares their story. One that's very, very thin and I noticed I would visibly struggled to read these pages.
All these points have nothing to do with the story, but unfortunately they had an impact on me being able to enjoy the story - because it kept taking me out. I really do wish these gimmicks would be used as an exception, rather than peppered or even core to specific characters talking.
Funnily enough, the book ends (sort of abruptly) and after the closing chapter and the author thanks, there's a mini story at the end. This is told from Adam Fawley's perspective, no gimmicks and it was super - I couldn't put the book down until I had finished this last section. This just reminds me that I really do enjoy Hunter's stories, and the characters and they can definitely stand strong on their own two feet.