The Stonecutter

Although the story was interesting and intriguing, the narration did not do anything to evoke a sense of a small Swedish town. It ruined my enjoyment of the book to the extent that I skipped large portions, something I've never done before. Eamonn Riley sounded as though he would be more at home reading children's stories rather than adult mystery

This really is a collection of parts as it travells backwards and forwards through time, moves continents and my slips in and out of ability to suspend belief. Parts are excellent, with spot-on characterisation and descriptions and yet others parts had me saying out loud "people do not say that "or no-one behaves like that".

The part consistently flawed through the novel is the narrartion. The intonation and overstressing of certain words reminded me of when I was four and my primary school teacher's afternoon reading. I don't want to hear the narrator's emotional respose, or be told which word in a sentence to pay particular attention to, I want the words to speak for themselves. If the narration had been better then probably the story would have been less a construction of parts and more a seamless enjoyable event.

A very dull book: lackluster writing - there is simply no tension in it, no pace. And the narrator himself sounds so bored, it's no wonder the listener is also. I wouldn't bother if I were you.

This book held me enthralled from the beginning to the very end. Many threads run through the story each one opening up another puzzle that had to be solved so that the death of a young girl can finally be understood and the parents allowed to grieve. Each line of enquiry draws you further into the lives of all the characters, unwrapping the folds of their exsistance and exposing the good aswell as the bad and the evil.

Relationships that start out as sound and secure break down as each story line unfolds, but the opposite is also true as people mentally mend they are able to pick up their lives and make them worth living.

An exceptionally good read.