CLOSE TO THE EDGE by Anna Britton

 4*, but only because Gabe finally pulls her head out of the sand, 2/3 of the way gone. But how on earth has Juliet passed psych evals and not been sent for DEI training or plain 'just manners and basic human decency and courtesy' training? The woman has ISSUES, and I don't just mean Keith.

Despite my not having read book 1 - I hadn't realised it's a series - I didn't get lost in this book. The start, with the 2 female detectives having been injured in a shooting, felt reasonable but the book required a LOT of suspension of disbelief. Its events are happening in 2024 UK and there's no way any employer would or could afford to risk an employee who's clearly not physically and mentally fit for work being on her premises, let alone before a psych eval. So that was the first huge suspension of disbelief. The next was Juliet's abrasiveness that screamed red waving flags at some form of neurodiversity or mental health condition. I'm not sure I can place a noun to her, but her personality was about -75 and counting. She came across as closed-off, arrogant, unhealthy, sociopathic, likely majorly on the spectrum and yet no one has suggested that she gets professional help or sees an in-house counsellor? She's not just not a team player, but a downright nasty and unpleasant person. I think if she'd been more present in the book, I'd have likely been put off. Why her colleagues haven't complained about her requires another huge suspension of disbelief.

Gabe broke rules but I understood what drove her and why. I think maybe there has to be a degree of selfishness and 'me, myself and I' if you're a cop at her level or above, but thankfully she began to see the personal and professional errors of her ways and pulled her head out of the sand and made changes. She was, at a couple of points, coming across as Juliet's unthinking minion. To risk what she did and not be down for a disciplinary, was, thankfully, her wake-up call. She's lucky her guy is the guy he seems to be, but ugh, considering sacrificing her dog to close a case, made me dislike her immensely at that point. I mean, Brit and animal lover here - how could she? 

The 'reveal' about her sexuality felt incredibly non-seguing and tbh, I wondered why the author felt it necessary to go there. It hadn't really raised its head to any degree and the aftermath was a damp squib. It came across as trying to make the book appeal to a more diverse readership and the LGBTQIA++ community but felt inorganic. and irrelevant, and showed Alice - possibly the most likeable and can-be-counted-on character - as slightly close-minded, which she wasn't. That scene was irrelevant and tbh, needs editing out. It was huge tokenism at its best. I also didn't like that this focus was on an ethnic minority character, either.

The bad guys seemed portrayed as bad guys you'd like to be your mates. Ish. Maybe not close ones but ones who'd splash the cash, know the best places to go and make sure everyone had a good time. Were they believable? Nope. Charismatic? Maybe the T-guy (name's too complicated to recall) but not the others. And for both Juliet and Gabe to even briefly consider his offers - despite their very understandable personal reasons for doing so - made them human and fallible at a time that they'd gotten what they'd been pursuing for so long, and come across as corruptible and unprofessional. And oh, yes, unprofessionalism crops up quite a lot in this book. Thank goodness for Paul and Alice. 

It's intriguing enough, though, and the Keith red flags were glaring enough for me to want to read the next book in the series. 

ARC courtesy of Canelo and NetGalley for my reading pleasure.