THE COPY CAT by Emmy Ellis

3.5* Book 3 has a gut-churning opening, but has this series mostly back on track.

This book should come with a warning of unstomachable horror, depravity and evil, because it's blunt, brutal and descriptive. It's what book 2 lacked, though I could've done without the details. It makes you wonder what genes could breed such evil and how that evil goes on to breed another generation. It's truly horrible, and there's animal abuse, though not graphic/fully on-page and mostly in the past. That needs a warning, too, as we Brits are animal lovers.

So, there's gruesome crimes from 30-odd years ago, and from the here and now. They're committed by a perpetrator who's shown from the start, but who's utterly invisible to the police and who it only feels got caught because of a separate and spur-of-the-moment decision and GBH. There wasn't any police work/detecting that got close to suspecting him. Full stop. There's was too much going on, with the mole being mostly outed in book 2, and surveillance being upped; with the stuff in a detective's personal life coming to the fore and culminating in a very convenient out for someone who was perhaps shades of grey; there was more of Anna and Parole, who I think could have worked in another life; and there was filler, too, unfortunately.

The book very much feels like the series could end here, as one of the strong female characters departs, and one shades-of-grey person - there's more than one - gets a form of justice, and another gets a slightly battered heart, but also a freedom of sorts. The gang at the core of the series disbands far too quickly and easily, without the expected hydras and tentacles that you expect from gangs. It was a little anticlimactic, tbh. And showed even more people as being shades of grey. Still, it was worth a read, but neither this nor book 2 live up to book 1. Oh, and again, the author confuses Muslims, Hindus and what's not acceptable diet wise to both, which smacks of not doing basic homework and editors not doing their job. I mean, you don't need Google to help, it's so basic. And to make such mistakes is disrespectful and tokenism.

ARC courtesy of NetGalley and Joffe Books for my reading pleasure.

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