A Solitary Man

The book started off really nice, I liked Xav's personality and the way he interacted with his co-workers. I thought I would enjoy the banter between them, but, well, that didn't happen because of reasons.

Major spoilers incoming, I tried writing a spoilers-free review, but it's not happening.

The investigation was pretty good. I think the authors did their research and nothing was left to chance. I mostly really liked it, it made sense right until I started having some questions that didn't get answers. The plot didn't get resolved. I mean, yeah, they caught the bad guys, but who are the bad guys? Who pulled the strings? Who was behind all of it? I have no clue.

I like how the deputies went over with it, but I didn't get a clear answer on what exactly went on. And now that I'm thinking about it, there's a pretty big thing that kept being brought up only to be completely ignored (the church). What was that all about?

Evan and Xavier's relationships progressed... somehow. Right since they first met strong feelings were implied, but I didn't feel any of them. Later when love was brought up (multiple times and I got the impression the authors forgot they mentioned it in the first place) I also didn't feel it. Most of the interactions between Evan and Xavier were related to the case, there was some steam too, some intimate talk, but it was quite brief and it could be chalked up to two guys getting to know each other. The loving looks came out of nowhere, the mutual understanding too. They spent much more time on the case than getting to know each other in a loving way. (Which I liked, but there was more investigation development than relationship development so it didn't really make sense.)

Going back to the case, I didn't really understand how Evan missed something so important as his boss being a bad guy for three years. And his pal too. And speaking of him, we do know that his pal (Tally? Wally? Whatever his name was) was involved as well, Faison called him after his fight with Evan, but there was no word on him being arrested. And what about Charlie? Why did he do it? And how did he get to do it with Faison? And, again, who pulled the strings? Faison was just facilitating things, there's no way he was leading the show, and I didn't get enough info on Charlie either way, but I tend to believe he didn't either. And why did Charlie fake his drowning? He had the perfect job to keep doing it, no one was even suspecting he was tampering with the system, so why did he do it?

And what about Michael? I bet he had a lot to say, but no one seemed to ask. And what came of him afterwards?

Ugh, I have so many questions, I shouldn't have read this book, it's frustrating.

But let's move on. There's one more thing I didn't really enjoy and that is the writing. There were so many words being repeated. When the characters were talking about the shooting I read that word like five times in two paragraphs, and that's only one example, a lot of words got repeated over and over again. Then there were expressions that repeated throughout the book. And the description was just too wordy (I saw it described like that in another review and it really fits), there was a lot said without actually saying anything.

The more I think about this book the more I find things I did not enjoy, but most of all I'm disappointed about how the investigation got 'resolved'.