Acid Row. Minette Walters

The intriguing title suggest a place or environment that is going to be crucial to the unfolding of the story but this is emphatically not demonstrated here; in spite of the title, there is no strong sense of place conveyed in the writing. There’s a similar issue with the characters as there is no rounded sense of the characters, they mostly being rather flat and any characteristics that they do show are defined solely by their roles and actions – and those rather superficially. There’s no sense of an inner life in any of them.

Once the police are involved, matters improve somewhat but this is largely due to the intrinsic interest of following police procedurals and does not seem to arise organically from the characters and their actions.

The focus of the work continually changes too – the siege/police procedural/society. Overall very unsatisfying.