Review: Touch of Red

Touch of Red by Laura Griffin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars. I wanted to give this book three stars but I was comparing this to Laura's other books, compared to the genre she is still streets ahead of the others.

Brooke Porter is a crime scene investigator with the Delphi Centre, incredibly dedicated she is almost OCD in her attention to detail and commitment to catching the guilty. She is brought to a crime scene where a young woman was brutally murdered just outside her front door. Immediately Brooke senses that there is something 'off' about the scene which leads her to discover that there may have been a witness.

Sean Byrne is a homicide detective. After being shot recently he has had a 'come to Jesus' moment and realised that his life was fairly meaningless and he could have died without ever making a real connection or creating a legacy. He's attracted to Brooke, he finds her intriguing and wants to know her better.

I haven't read the previous Tracers book so I don't know the backstory with Sean and Brooke (if there is any). While I enjoyed the investigative aspects of this novel I felt that the romance overtook the plot about halfway/ two-thirds of the way through and I lost interest a bit. The Brooke, the OCD investigator decides that she will ignore protocol and the rules of evidence and just investigate on her own. Whilst describing her as TSTL might be harsh she definitely has those tendencies.

I have reviewed another series that Laura has started and commented that it felt as though she was being pushed into a direction that she wasn't comfortable with and sadly I feel as though the same is happening with Tracers. This is a series of romantic suspense/ thriller romances. There are scary psycho serial killers everywhere and geeky women who investigate. This started that way and I was L.O.V.I.N.G. it, then, as I said, just after half way through it felt like I was reading one sex scene after another and the investigation was shunted into the background. In the end, I didn't feel the murderer was all that exciting and I had serious doubts about the detective skills that identified the murderer.

If you haven't read any of the Tracers novels before you will find this enjoyable and educational (who knew that about children's fingerprints?) but IMHO lovers of Laura Griffin's novels will find this a little disappointing. Please dial back the sex/ romance and up the mystery quality in the next one Laura.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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