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thebooktrail88's review
5.0
The battle of the bands reaches Hull, and the outcome is not a pretty one. Hull’s most successful band of the 1990s is making a comeback…but not everyone is happy.
Booktrail of the locations in the novel Booktrail map of The Late Greats
Cue the music for a little bit of nostalgia from the 1990s and a band reforming that many have missed.
New Holland was everything that the 1990 was renowned for – music you could dance to and get lost in, new music like that of Oasis and Blur – gritty with a heavy dose of reality as it reigned supreme over the airwaves for a while.
But the Hull of the 90s was different to the Hull now. Things have changed, the city has changed yet some still hark back to the good old days which may not have been as good as they remember. The famous Adelphi club evokes a time and place and its mention in the novel more than sets the scene.
People change, the city changes and not always for the better. Some people want to live in the past and never grow up. Hull or the characters > they are both very closely tied together in fate.
The secrets of what happened when the band broke up will reveal a lot about why the comeback may not be such a good idea after all. Is revisiting former glory ever the same the second time around?
There’s someone on their way from London to warn Joe off the case, even the police are reluctant to get involved, and Joe’s mentor Don is quick to warn him too.
But this case forms part of Joe and his memories of Hull. Both tied to each other he can’t let go. the city and its people are evoked via 90s nostalgia and a great crest of a musical wave which flooded the city and which now threatens to do the same again but not in the same way.
Booktrail of the locations in the novel Booktrail map of The Late Greats
Cue the music for a little bit of nostalgia from the 1990s and a band reforming that many have missed.
New Holland was everything that the 1990 was renowned for – music you could dance to and get lost in, new music like that of Oasis and Blur – gritty with a heavy dose of reality as it reigned supreme over the airwaves for a while.
But the Hull of the 90s was different to the Hull now. Things have changed, the city has changed yet some still hark back to the good old days which may not have been as good as they remember. The famous Adelphi club evokes a time and place and its mention in the novel more than sets the scene.
People change, the city changes and not always for the better. Some people want to live in the past and never grow up. Hull or the characters > they are both very closely tied together in fate.
The secrets of what happened when the band broke up will reveal a lot about why the comeback may not be such a good idea after all. Is revisiting former glory ever the same the second time around?
There’s someone on their way from London to warn Joe off the case, even the police are reluctant to get involved, and Joe’s mentor Don is quick to warn him too.
But this case forms part of Joe and his memories of Hull. Both tied to each other he can’t let go. the city and its people are evoked via 90s nostalgia and a great crest of a musical wave which flooded the city and which now threatens to do the same again but not in the same way.
sethlynch's review
5.0
This story has the traditional English detective novel as it’s backbone. There’s a limited pool of suspects – it isn’t a closed room so technically there are an unlimited amount of suspects, but Quantrill plays fair and doesn’t introduce any twin brother’s from Peru– and there is the detective, Geraghty, to solve the crime. We follow Geraghty around as he interviews suspects and finally resolves the case. I can get put off by books like this because I work out who did it very early on. The rest of the book from that point is seeing what extra smoke trails the author lays down. They also tend to have one-dimensional characters and every detail is either a direct clue or a red-herring.
I didn’t get put off reading this book: I got sucked in. Perhaps that was because I wasn’t totally concerned by who did it. The characters were well-developed and the unfolding story was engaging. The band’s manager, the journalist, the Hull gangsters, the cops, the band members – girlfriends wives and would have been wives, they were all convincing portrayals. And so the story of their interactions, their own motivations and lives, was as interesting as the solving of the mystery.
I didn’t get put off reading this book: I got sucked in. Perhaps that was because I wasn’t totally concerned by who did it. The characters were well-developed and the unfolding story was engaging. The band’s manager, the journalist, the Hull gangsters, the cops, the band members – girlfriends wives and would have been wives, they were all convincing portrayals. And so the story of their interactions, their own motivations and lives, was as interesting as the solving of the mystery.
bhalpin's review
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
4.0
Another fun Geraghty mystery, this time centering on a once-popular band that might be getting back together. Entertaining, but maybe leaning a bit too hard on the will-they-or-won't-they and the "Geraghty can't be a sensible PI and keeps pissing off his boss" tropes. Still, I liked it.
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