Joe Country

Oh, Mick, you were doing so well in making each entry in this series a tensely-plotted and craftily-resolved story, with maybe a hint about what might be raised in the next novel. This alone provided an experience that had me coming back for more. This book, however, while containing as much tension and as many twists and turns, raised so many concerns, not enough of which were resolved, and those that were, were not very satisfactorily done. The big showdown with River and his father is nothing more than a cliffside scuffle, and a few pages at the end suggest Harkness's multi-book pain-in-the-assery is now dealt with, no justice or face-to-face closure for his son?! Or Harkness is not dead and this a bullshit misdirect. 🙄 Coe's literal worst nightmare is, for all the reader can tell, how he spent his last moments? Emma, the only person who after wrongfully being pushed out of a promising career track, tells Taverner to fuck off, rather than go Slough House, and helping out when it wasn't her job anymore, ends up dead?! The entire book is one long torturous descent of an innocent man into the depths of isolation and depression at the whims of bad actors and at the end he's scarred and his foes' fates are glossed over or pending? It's obvious it's set up for the next novel, which hopefully will be that much more explosive as a result, but 6 books into a series is pretty deep to start bringing out the type of cliffhanger-adjacent endings which I loathe. 🙎🏼‍♂️ Oh, and if it's possible, even though it's standard that people die and are betrayed in each book, I think things actually got darker than usual. 😕 Either the next book will redeem the series, or it will be the last one I read. 😡

⚠️alcoholism, fatphobia, self harm