So if you’re going to read, or are reading, Darkside then you may not want to read this review yet. It contains no actual spoilers but by implication it tells you at least one thing about the previous book.
Finders Keepers is I suppose the third in a trilogy of books which began with Blacklands but it’s more like the second Jonas Holly book after Darkside.
Finders Keepers begins as a child goes missing from a car on Exmoor and a note is left which reads “You Don’t Love Her”. More children go missing and similar notes are left. Once again a police team is sent across from Taunton, largely the same characters and once again Holly is involved in the investigation.
Steven Lamb returns again and plays a key role. Also this time we also get to meet his younger brother Davey who has a plan to catch the kidnapper.
There are things that Bauer is good at that she still does well in this book – the creation of tension and suspense, relationships between characters, particularly in families – but somehow it wasn’t as effective overall as her previous two books. I definitely didn’t have that same sense of wanting to know what happens next and being caught up in it. Also I think the actual crime and the villain are, ah, a little weird.
The main reason I read this straight after Darkside was to get resolution on Holly himself and you do get that but by the time it came the character was so abused – both in terms of himself and the way he’s used in the story – that I was a little jaded and didn’t really care. Which is a shame.
6/10 – not bad but failed to live up to the potential of the previous two books.
