Another Girl

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.

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What’s Another Girl About?

Serena Butler is loaned out to do some plainclothes intelligence gathering in a nearby city. She misses a check-in with her handler, right after saying something tantalizing about making some new friends. This galvanizes her team back at King’s Lake and her DCI pushes her weight and rank around to get involved in the investigation into her disappearance–and the drugs investigation Butler was helping with.

At the same time, there’s an apparent hit and run for the Murder Squad to look in back at home–and while they do their due diligence with that, their concern for one of their own clearly has captured their attention (also, an absent pathologist means a delayed autopsy, so they can only do so much).

A Change of Focus

Initially, DCI Cara Freeman and DC Serena Butler carried most of this book–although DI Tom Green gets a lot more focus than he’s ever received before. And that was just great, I always liked him, but I wanted to see him get to shine a bit. Freeman and Butler are a great pairing and really establish this as a different kind of entry in this series.

Yes, when Waters shows up roughly mid-way through the book, he ends up getting a lot of the focus, as we’re used to. Still, the narrative really does take advantage of Waters’ absence and explores the team and uses the multiple POVs to a greater advantage than Grainger has in the past. I don’t want Waters to get pushed to the background on a regular basis–but man, I really appreciated this.

But this is Serena’s book, really. We start with her assignment hitting a bump in the road and we finish by it going deeper than she was ready for. But throughout, we get to learn a lot more about this character that’s been around for twelve books and really takes on new life and a greater depth. She’s been a favorite of mine from early on in her first appearance–and I like her more now that I understand her better. Honestly, if she got her own spin-off series in the future, I’d be game, or just for more books like this. (a book that uses Green more would also be welcome, but given the way his character typically operates, I’m not sure that’s possible).

DC’s Shadow

DC Smith (it still feels strange to call him David) has always loomed large over these King’s Lake books, but it seemed to me that it was a little larger this time than it had been since Songbird (but it’s not like I keep statistics or anything). He’s either mentioned in conversation (by people on all sides of the law) or thought of by Chris and Serena–who will remember some advice/guidance he gave them–which allows Granger to slip in a line or two using his DC voice–and I’m always going to be in favor of that.

Which, I guess, brings us to:

A Word About the Narration

This is an audiobook, so I need to talk about the narration. But as I keep saying, I don’t know what to say about Gildart Jackson’s work on this series that I haven’t said umpteen times.

When his voice starts coming out of my phone, my mind instantly settles in for a good time. There’s a calmness that he evokes in me almost instantly (note: it’s not his voice, I rarely felt calm during the Alex Verus books). He catches the humor, the tension, the camaraderie, the…I don’t know, the spirit of these books. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, I’m not picking these up in print (although, I know at least one non-audiobook person who says they’re great in print), I have to have Jackson’s voice.

So, what did I think about Another Girl?

Grainger doesn’t frequently put his King’s Lake characters in peril (I thought about listing exceptions to that rule, but I won’t–but the point stands), this series is about typical investigations. But when he does, he does it effectively. And boy howdy, he does so here. I haven’t been this concerned for the fate of a Grainger character since A Private Investigation‘s close.

But more than just the danger aspect, watching Serena deal with the pressures of working undercover (especially as she initially wasn’t supposed to go as deep as she ended up) was so well done. Equally well done was watching her team fret about her when they couldn’t contact her and weren’t sure what was going on.

The hit-and-run story never got the time I initially expected, but the way that Grainger worked it into the overall storyline was his typical well-done work. He was able to weave it into the drugs story and show how it is about much more than drugs.

This tied this particular novel into something we first saw in On Eden Street and will likely show up for at least one more novel. Which isn’t to say that this novel isn’t largely a stand-alone like the rest, but there’s something that will tie it to further books.

I think I’ve rambled enough–possibly too much. I had a great time with this one, and as always I strongly encourage you to give this one a try. It would serve as a fine jumping-on point to the series (like every book so far), but if you have the time and means, I’d suggest starting at the beginning. Or somewhere. Just start with Peter Grainger, Gildart Jackson, and the detectives in and around King’s Lake Central.