There is something glamourous about American crime novels – if it rains in Glasgow it's nothing more than the norm; you can actually feel the dampness seeping through your shoes (and not in a good way). I think that American crime is popular because it feels like a holiday – you don't know the traditions until they are described; you don't get the references until they are explained; above all, it always seems more shiny.
In this vein Freeman's main character (Stride) is everything you imagine an American detective to be: physically imposing, mentally scarred and wildly attractive. His past, and that of his girlfriend's, are coming back to haunt them both: the unsolved murder of his dead wife's sister is being investigated by a reporter, and Serena's horrific childhood continues to impinge upon her present.
As much as I like Freeman's style the layout of the chapters in The Watcher detracts from the flow of the story (a reporter is writing a book about an unsolved murder of a childhood friend and these chapters are intertwined in the book's chapters - I have to admit, I skipped most of them: I didn't feel that the imagined musings of a teenage girl were of any benefit to my understanding of the current investigation and, frankly, they bored me). That said, I was fairly interested in Stride's history with his wife, but I don't know how much of that is due to knowing the characters from his previous novels.
Verdict: holiday read.
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