Fiona Erskine

I really wanted to like ‘The Chemical Detective’, but I really, really didn’t. It has a fun compromise and an engaging and refreshingly different heroine, but the prose completely failed to grab my attention.

Let’s start with the good stuff. It begins strongly, with protagonist Jaq suspecting something is fishy with a delivery at her work. Jaq works as a scientist at a company that monitors and tries to improve the quality of the snow at a ski resort. She has the makings of a great heroine, intelligent, passionate and determined. She also takes time out from her investigating to have lots of sex with a younger man. The fact that she is an older woman was refreshing, especially in a book with a straight up thriller plot, but it wasn’t enough to save the book for me.

I was gripped by the first few chapters, but as the plot developed I found myself less and less engaged by it. Part of the problem is that while Jaq is interesting, there are also loads of chapters dedicated to Frank Good, the ruthless CEO of a mysterious chemical company that is wrapped up in the shady goings on. Frank is a far less interesting to read than Jaq, and I found all the detail on corporate life in his chapters really dull. At 432 pages the book isn’t exactly short, and I can’t help feeling that a shorter edit that focussed much more on Jaq would have been more fun to read.

To be fair, things do pick up later on, with a fairly gripping section set in the ruins of Chernobyl, but by then I’d pretty much lost interest. On paper, an international investigation into chemical weapons sounds like a topical and promising plot. In reality I’m afraid I found it implausible and not at all gripping.

I think there’s a really good book in here somewhere, and I’ll be interested to see what author Fiona Erskine writes next. Unfortunately, ‘The Chemical Detective’ is too long, too slow and too bogged down in unnecessary detail to really thrill.

See more of my crime and thriller reviews on CriminOlly.wordpress.com… (mehr)

A quirky book, certainly, but I found it most engaging. The core of it is a sad tale set within the precincts of an agrochemical plant in Leith, the port of Edinburgh. The story unfolds through the identification of a collection of everyday objects found with a body. To understand how the plant operated the reader is gently provided with a fair amount of Chemistry and chemical engineering, and also learns the responsibilities of individual members of staff, individuals drawn with affection and respect. The dangers of the industrial processes within the works are disturbing, but so too is portrayal of de-skilling and an industry in decline, albeit an industry we are increasingly aware has contaminated the planet.… (mehr)