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Book Jacket

Blacklight Blue:
The Third Enzo Files
by Peter May

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Publication date: 11/10/2008.
Mysteries, 326 pp.

Number of reader reviews: 18
Readers' Consensus: 4.0
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First Impressions: Page 3 of 3
Rated 4 of 5 of 5 by Pamela (Winnetka CA)

Enjoyable to read.
I enjoyed reading this book. It kept my interest & was easy reading. I like the way you are able to get to know each character. They come to be friends or enemies. It was a good twist in the story and surprise to find out about Anna.

Rated 4 of 5 of 5 by Bonnie (Mukwonago WI)

Mystery with a Twist
Looking for a good 'whodunnit' mystery with a few twists? Then, this is the book for you. Written in an easy-to-read style with an Eastern European setting, there are enough characters and swift transitions to keep you on your toes. Not only could I visualize the scenes and scenery, the infusion of the French language adds a decorative flair throughout. Definitely an enjoyable read!

Rated 2 of 5 of 5 by Kevin (Highland UT)

Blacklight Blue by Peter May
Enzo MacLeod, a Scot teaching on a faculty in southwest France, confidently bet that he could use his expertise to crack seven notorious murders described in a book on cold cases by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin. Enzo has in fact solved the first two crimes.

But the third is far from his mind right now: he has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and he has become the victim of someone who seems intent on destroying his credit and his relationships as well as getting him arrested for murder.

Having established a safe house to protect his loved ones he sets to work. Are his personal woes somehow connected to the digging he has done into the brutal murder of a boy in a Paris apartment sixteen years ago? Can he stay alive long enough to catch the long-hidden killer? This is the third installment in the series.

The plot line sounds great. The main character has worked well in other books. The author has written many novels. In my opinion this book simply falls flat.

There is a lot of violence in the book where one looks on dispassionately. The author fails to make the reader care enough about the victims to be as shocked as we should be. The best suspense in the book is in the personal lives of Enzo and his daughter not in the actual murder mystery.

I truly enjoyed the descriptions of Strasbourg and Paris, France. The author did a good job of bringing the city to life. The setting for the book is very well done.

Overall, I felt the writing did not flow well. A chapter is ended without pulling the reader to the next chapter. It was supposed to be a thriller but failed to thrill me. I gave this book 2 out of 5 stars.

Rated 1 of 5 of 5 by Shirley (Batavia IL)

Sorry
Rarely, if ever, has it been necessary for me to skim descriptive pararaphs to finish a book, but this was the only alternative in finishing this book. The plot unbelieveable, the redundancy of fact unnecessary made this a difficult read. The characters not compelling, the coincidence of circumstance hard to believe, the writing poor. The ending leaving a path for future books too obvious. Not having read the previous installments of this series, it seemed unbelievable that this being the third the protagonist was so predictable.

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