Book Review: Looking for Alice: A Gunvor Strom Novel by Luna Miller

This one didn’t seem to know what it wanted to be… The blurb makes a big deal out of the older female retiree detective angle, which is what drew me to the story – much in the way of the Hulda series by Ragnar Jonasson. I read a lot of mysteries and they tend to run together after a while, so a protagonist who doesn’t follow the typical form of a disaffected alcoholic male or abused woman who takes back her life tends to catch my eye. Unfortunately I should have taken a clue from the cover on this one – it features a young blond, which should have clued me in that this was not entirely going to be about said older retiree Detective.

So instead of what I was looking for – a sort of contemporary Scandinavian Mrs. Pollifax – turned into a lot of banality fit somewhat oddly around rather a lot of sex and violence. I did not expect it and it didn’t seem to mesh with the other parts of the story. The book started off interesting. I thought it was going to be a quirky detective story based on the beginning, but then it got graphic and aggressive very quickly and started to lose me.

The characters didn’t feel very well developed, nor the plot – there was a lot of suspended disbelief and it overwhelmed the story. I wasn’t able to finish, even though it’s a short book. This one just wasn’t for me…

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my obligation – free review copy.