Hangman

The highly anticipated sequel to Ragdoll by Daniel Cole, has a lot to live up to.  When we finished Ragdoll, the hero Wolf had fled the scene following his colleague Baxter's decision to let him leave the crime scene.  Wolf has gone underground and no-one has seen him, we find Baxter now two years after the end of the Ragdoll murders and the numerous copy cats.  Now there is a new mass murderer who is taking bodies and having them hang from great heights with the word 'BAIT' scored into the torso of the mainly male bodies.

Baxter and her team, including the returning Edmunds have to work with new friends including the ex-pat Rouche, a man born in England but working for the CIA in America who is as disruptive as Wolf was but just as conflicted.

The book has the feel of the writer spreading his wings, but whereas the first book had the social context of fear and panic of unknown attackers on the streets of London, with the media spinning people into a frenzy for their health and safety; this novel though has the feel of being a lost love child of Dan Brown.  Extensive plotting with twists aplenty, by the book characters with little in the way of emotional connection and elaborate set-pieces of action and gore being given precedence over telegraphed dialogue.

This reader feels that following the high-octane, gasping intensity of Ragdoll this is a step backwards although the (very) late introduction of someone means that another book is in the offing and this return to the mean may hopefully incite a return to form.

Cole is a writer who clearly likes to take risks with his writing, compounded intentions and expectations of his readership but for this reader it seems to have come up short to the level of what Ragdoll was, my hope is that the expected third book is a return to that thrilling form.

Hangman is released by Trapeze Books on 22nd March