Book Review: The Corruptible

So here we are again on Book Review Tuesday. Today’s reviewed book: The Corruptible: A Ray Quinn Mystery by Mark Mynheir. I received The Corruptible for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review, conducted on behalf of Blogging for Books. This was my first official Advanced Reading Copy – ARC – review, which I have to admit was a very cool thing to me. If you are not of the book blogging/book reviewing world, an ARC is a pre-publication version of a soon-to-be-published book, that is sent out to reviewers in advance of public availability of the book. It is clearly marked as an ARC, and it struck me as incredibly nifty to have something to read that regular readers did not. Actually, regular readers could have had this one – this book was marked as available for sale on April 5, 2011, so by the time I received it (less than a month ago), it was already out in the world. Which I guess makes me less cool and ahead-of-the-curve than I thought. Boo, hiss.

Anyway, The Corruptible is the second book in a series about cop-turned-private-investigator Ray Quinn. Now, if I had noticed it was the second book in a series at the time I was choosing a book to review from B for B, I would not have selected it. I did not read the first, and have a fairly hard-and-fast rule about not going out of order in a series if I can at all help it, because I don’t like feeling like I’m missing something from the get-go. I was somewhat reluctant to read/review this book at all because of that fact. But I figured I would give it a go and see how it went.

Turns out, I was able to follow the story just fine without reading the first book. Granted, there were some references to earlier events and backstory that I did not understand right away, and I’m sure there were some nuances and/or references that I missed as a result, but all in all I found the story to stand decently well on its own two feet – a positive in its favor, as far as I’m concerned.

The novel opens with Ray Quinn getting beaten up in a bathroom stall because of a client – a bigger issue than getting beaten up would normally represent because Quinn is still recuperating from the career-ending (and life-changing) injuries caused by activities in the first book. While lamenting the life he has wound up in, Quinn takes on a new client/case – investigating another ex-cop. Through a series of twists, turns, and misdirections (intentional and otherwise), Quinn finds himself pulled in multiple directions and at the end of his rope more than once.

With a cast of characters ranging from the predictable to the pretty random, the book moves at a steady pace with plenty of action. I found myself rooting for Quinn almost from the start, and for his assistant-cum-mentee Crevis as well. The story was an engaging one and the characters were well-developed – the good guys were sympathetic, the bad guys were dastardly, and the not sure-what-to-think-yet guys were appropriately sneaky and flip-floppy. The writing style was easy to follow and easy to get into; this is not high literature, but it was a fun read with occasional flashes from great one-liners in the form of descriptions and observations.

I won’t lie, I’m not rushing out to read the first book. But I’m not the world’s biggest detective/crime story buff. I would say this is a solidly entertaining book nonetheless, particularly if you are a fan of the genre. I give it a three out of five.