Sixteen Horses

This reads as a more literary take on crime fiction. I am not the biggest fan of literary fiction - I find it overly verbose and dry and unfortunately this suffers from its pretentions. I like my genre fiction to be told in a punchy way, and this does not have that. It almost has a gothic feel at times, but somehow it falls a bit flat on that too.

Opening with the discovery of 16 horse heads the tale follows a specialist animal crime consultant trying to unravel the mysteries of a dying coastal town. The setting is dreary and grim and a level of suspense and horror is generated as the cruelties present in the town are uncovered. There is a lot of potential in the stories being told.

Unfortunately it all struggled to get passed the overly written prose for me.