Tag: Roy Grace

Peter James – Faith | Review

Title: Faith

Author: Peter James

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 470

Rating: 3/5

This is another one of James’ lesser hits, which is kind of unsurprising because I’ve never found his standalones to be particularly strong. I guess I’m a Roy Grace fan more than a Peter James fan, although I am still slowly but surely working my way through everything he’s written. It’s just that this definitely isn’t at his best in this one.

Part of that is probably because of the characters. We’re mostly focusing on a manipulative plastic surgeon and his doormat wife, who he basically uses as a walking portfolio. Bad things start to happen to them, but really who cares? If anything, the fun in this story comes from watching their lives slowly fall apart.

Other than that, there’s not a great deal to say about this one. It’s a pretty competent thriller I guess, but I don’t really have much time for competent thrillers because there are so many of them out there and they’re all basically the same. In fact, by the time I was a third of the way through this, I was asking myself why I was still reading. But I’m a completionist and I’m trying to work my way through everything that Peter James ever wrote, and so I had to keep on keeping on anyway or my brain would have hated me.

And that brings us on to something of a problem for me, which is that I need to write another 200 words to finish off this review. But there’s just not much to say, to the point at which my favourite characters were some of the minor ones who didn’t really get as much air time as I think they deserved.

What more can I say? It was competent but not for me, and I feel as though even if you are going to read Peter James, you shouldn’t start with this one. Read some of the Roy Grace books instead, or if you’re not into crime then perhaps it’s worth checking out The House on Cold Hill. I think that one’s even been turned into a stage play, which could be worth checking out.

So would I recommend this one? Not really, I’m afraid. It was just a bit of a filler read for me, and I’m hoping that the next one that I pick up will be more memorable. I can’t say that this was awful or anything like that, but I do think that if you ask me about it in six months, I won’t remember a thing. That’s actually surprisingly common and it’s hardly the first time I’ll have read a book and immediately forgotten it. Shame it happened with an author that I actually quite like though, but eh.

Learn more about Faith.


Peter James – Sweet Heart | Review

Title: Sweet Heart

Author: Peter James

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 340

Rating: 3.5/5

This book was a bit of a strange experience, because James has definitely evolved as a writer since he came up with this one. At the same time, it wasn’t bad, although a few of the references dated it back to the early nineties when it was released. But that doesn’t really matter because the story itself is what makes it worth reading.

Sure, it has its fair share of clichés, but it’s also a haunted house story. In fact, it basically read like an early draft of The House on Cold Hill, and I enjoyed that one and so I enjoyed this one too. The writing was never clunky, but there were a few points at which it was perhaps overly simple. That said, it did exactly what it needed to do to tell the story, and I can’t really complain about it.

I’m not sure if I’d say this is a particularly good place to start with Peter James, but if you’ve read a few of his other books and perhaps you feel like a break from Roy Grace, this could well be the book for you. That’s especially true if you’re more of a fan of horror and the supernatural than police procedural novels, although I’m a fan of both and personally think that he’s better at the latter.

I also liked the way that everything all came together here, although it was perhaps a little predictable. But that made it a lot easier for me to keep track of what was going on and who was who, and so I never once felt lost. The result was just a pretty easy read that did still leave me feeling a little bit unsettled, to the point at which I was checking over my shoulder in my house to make sure that I was still alone. If that doesn’t sell this book, I don’t know what will.

Click here to buy Sweet Heart.