Book Review of Murder Board by Brian Shea
I love police procedurals. Ed McBain and his 87th Precinct novels are some of my favorites. Murder Board is similar, only set in Boston and features now homicide detective Michael Kelly. As with any police procedural, we get justice. And I thought it would be appropriate to post this on St. Patrick’s Day, as Michael Kelly is Irish. The novel even has some Irish mob in it, along with a Polish crime family. Good stuff.
I wrote “now homicide detective” because in the prologue, Michael Kelly is a hostage negotiator. I’ll not say more on that, other than something happens that causes him to transfer. And the rest of the story picks up where he’s in homicide.
This novel also involves human trafficking. And Brian Shea shows the dark side of this evil. No glorifying prostitution here. I applaud Shea for that. The murder victim is a thirteen-year-old runaway. The story shows a little more from the criminal side of things, and it’s not pretty. Hard to comprehend how humans can do these things to other humans. It’s interesting because Shea also shows the family side of these criminals. Not sure it made them more human to me; just made me angrier.
The story isn’t really a mystery. We learn early on who the bad guys are. The only who-dunnit is within that group itself – which one actually killed the girl.
I enjoyed the novel. It kept me reading and wanting to read more. Michael Kelly reminded me of Harry Bosch, from Michael Connelly’s books. A bit of a loner, has a daughter, doesn’t always color inside the lines, has good relationships and bad ones inside the department.
The novel is fairly clean. No f-bombs. Some profanity, but minimal. Again, I applaud Shea for this, considering his characters are cops and criminals. Hollywood would have us believe every other word from these types are curse words. No on page explicit sex. And the violence is not overly graphic. Technically, nothing jumped out at me and made me say, “now wait a minute.”
Overall a good read. I’m going to put it just behind Win, but the two are close.
Book Rankings for 2022
- Win by Harlen Coben
- Murder Board by Brian Shea
- One Night in Sedona by Carrie Latimer.
- Coffin Cove by Jackie Elliott
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