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A review by tatterededges
Kind of Cruel by Sophie Hannah
2.0
This book started off ok but very quickly went downhill. There are a couple of very glaring problems. The first being that Ginny is a hypnotherapist, someone who helps people quit smoking, lose weight etc by using hypnosis to alter their automatic thought processes. She is not a psychoanalyst. The two are very different with very different training and purposes, yet Ginny behaves as though she's a psychoanalyst who dabbles in hypnotherapy. She psychoanalyses everyone in the book from just meeting them briefly which is just preposterous. There's a reason psychoanalysis takes years.
It's as though her character's main function in the book is to explain the motives of the other characters, which is fine if it's absolutely necessary, but at least get the characters profession right. Make her presence in the book vaguely plausible. Or better yet, don't make the characters behaviour and motivations so ridiculous that they need third party explanations.
The second being that the words kind, cruel, kind of cruel are not so obscure. To suggest that somebody uttering them under hypnosis would attract so much attention that the police be involved is pretty far fetched. That it would be considered so strong a lead that a detective would spend the whole day sitting in while the suspect/witness undergoes hypnosis is ridiculous.
I call bullshit on the extent of Ambers insomnia. If she really did sleep as little as is claimed, she could not function, she would not be able to hold down a job or look after two kids. You need a certain amount of sleep for brain function. Amber would have been physically sick, depressed, forgetful, accident prone, paranoid, if not experiencing some degree of psychosis. I also think the reason given for the insomnia was weak.
What was the relevance of the pages and pages of psychoanalysis of Simon's character? Why do we care how he feels about having sex with his wife? In fact, what is the relevance of that whole Charlie and Simon relationship? And the Charlie and Olivia relationship? And while I'm on this Olivia character, why would a non-cop be involved in a murder investigation? Let alone solving it.
Which brings me to the killer. Who didn't see that coming from the first few chapters? Jo's motives are asinine. If she really didn't want to look after her disabled sister sometime in the distant future, she'd have killed her sister and not a slew of strangers, in an incredibly convoluted and dubious plot to have people think she has her hands full. Or she'd just plant the idea that she's got her hands full in people's heads. She's a narcissist, they're very good at spin. Her "plan" is just so ludicrous that she'd probably get off in court because you can drive a truck through the holes in the logic.
I don't think I'll be reading any more of these Spilling CID books.
It's as though her character's main function in the book is to explain the motives of the other characters, which is fine if it's absolutely necessary, but at least get the characters profession right. Make her presence in the book vaguely plausible. Or better yet, don't make the characters behaviour and motivations so ridiculous that they need third party explanations.
The second being that the words kind, cruel, kind of cruel are not so obscure. To suggest that somebody uttering them under hypnosis would attract so much attention that the police be involved is pretty far fetched. That it would be considered so strong a lead that a detective would spend the whole day sitting in while the suspect/witness undergoes hypnosis is ridiculous.
I call bullshit on the extent of Ambers insomnia. If she really did sleep as little as is claimed, she could not function, she would not be able to hold down a job or look after two kids. You need a certain amount of sleep for brain function. Amber would have been physically sick, depressed, forgetful, accident prone, paranoid, if not experiencing some degree of psychosis. I also think the reason given for the insomnia was weak.
What was the relevance of the pages and pages of psychoanalysis of Simon's character? Why do we care how he feels about having sex with his wife? In fact, what is the relevance of that whole Charlie and Simon relationship? And the Charlie and Olivia relationship? And while I'm on this Olivia character, why would a non-cop be involved in a murder investigation? Let alone solving it.
Which brings me to the killer. Who didn't see that coming from the first few chapters? Jo's motives are asinine. If she really didn't want to look after her disabled sister sometime in the distant future, she'd have killed her sister and not a slew of strangers, in an incredibly convoluted and dubious plot to have people think she has her hands full. Or she'd just plant the idea that she's got her hands full in people's heads. She's a narcissist, they're very good at spin. Her "plan" is just so ludicrous that she'd probably get off in court because you can drive a truck through the holes in the logic.
I don't think I'll be reading any more of these Spilling CID books.