A disappointing 2.5 stars....Very irritating lead character. ( )

good fast read, shooting on film set in Melbourne and police partner relationship ( )

Not too bad, I might read another... ( )

Into the Night is the sequel to the great The Dark Lake. In this book, has Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock left behind her old life and started over fresh in Melbourne. Her relationship with Scott has hit a dead end and their son is staying with his father. Gemma herself is a shadow of herself. She misses her son, she mourns her failed relationship with her lover Felix that moved away. And, alone in Melbourne is she spending her time working cases and picking up strange men at bars at night for one night stands. One really gets the feeling that she's not OK.

Then a homeless man gets stabbed to death, but that case is quickly overshadowed when a young popular actor is killed on set. Together with her new partner Nick Fleet is Gemma trying to solve the actor's murder. There are many people on the set and those around the actor are all trying to paint the actors as being well liked. So, who killed him, and why?

Into the Night is a great sequel. The story is bleak, and Gemma I feel is not all there. She such a broken character, depressed and lonely. I do hope life will brighten for her. I was not that surprised at the ending. I had my suspicions along the way, but it was a satisfying ending. I can't wait to read the next book in the series.

I want to thank the publisher for providing me with a free copy for an honest review! ( )

Something about the book flap made me suspect this was part of a series. I logged on here and I was right, but it's only the second in the series. That surprised me. I still don't like it. The book was oddly engrossing. I don't know why, but I kept turning pages. This was a sophomorically written whodunit that wanted to be the Australian version of the Dublin Murder Squad -so- badly. It failed. The narrator-protagonist was dramatic about the smallest things in her life. She was super-weird about her son, too. She didn't read at all like a divorced parent who missed their kid, but something far more sinister. Her responses to her own misfortunes in life were flippant, bizarre, and clearly indicative that a whole book in the series had been written before this, where those things happened. It irritated me and weirded me out. She talked a lot about her one-night stands, drinking wine frequently, and still craving cigarettes. So, stereotypes of a cop. Okay.

The way the story was written, i was able to predict what would happen and when, and how clumsy the foreshadowing would be, and whether it'd be done in a way that irked me. Two huge social issues and personal losses were reduced to one-liners, and chapter transitions at that, in a row. I was unhappily stunned at how shallow the narrative was treating these topics: miscarriage after an affair, and being in the closet but living with your partner and your beard, all in the same apartment. These are real-life situations that hurt a lot of different people in different ways, and the author's just like LALALA WOO I MADE A CLIFFHANGER AND PLOT TWIST. No, you didn't. At best, it's sloppy characterization for melodrama. I'd even call it shock value if the topics the author had picked weren't so serious. And this was just in the first ninety pages of the hardback edition I was reading.

The narrator is deeply insecure about herself, especially how short she is. IRL she'd be five-foot-seven and wailing about not being tall as a model. I'm five-foot-two. She is incredibly uncomfortable leading an investigation and defers needlessly and automatically to men she perceives as superior for so many things. She presents obvious, mundane things as life-altering discoveries, such as the fact that morgues smell like decomposing bodies and chemicals. Hey murder cop? Be more detailed. A person in your position would idly remark that it was a mix of formaldehyde and other chemicals they were smelling!

The last seventy pages are pure soap opera. This book was way too long for the simple story it was telling. I was glad when it was finally over. ( )