Was deze schrijfster een beetje vergeten. Dit is een erg goed boek. Een web van leugens, drankmisbruik en intimidatie van kwetsbare getuigen door gehaaide advocaten maken de spanning compleet.

*** 3,75 stars ***

amazing!

zu deutsch das buch "samariter".

What would you do if a girl knocked on your window looking to get into a car and you had a child in the backseat and it was dark out? Would you risk letting her into your car? Or would you, as Faith Saunders did, ignore the plea even though the girl in question was soon joined by two men who were looking for her.

All The Little Pieces by Jilliane Hoffan is a first-rate thriller..

This book is greatt. I was gripped from the first page all the way til the end. Hoffman has dealt with alcoholism, the law, the justice system, sexual assault, mental health and a whole host of other sensitive issues incredibly well in All The Little Pieces whilst keeping the novel feeling real.

I only found myself becoming more entrenched and invested in the plot and lives of the characters as I was reading. It was painful to see Faith’s life change so drastically when it really boiled down to her being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Hoffman has dealt with alcoholism, the law, the justice system, sexual assault, mental health and a whole host of other sensitive issues that she is known for in her books.

This is a must read for sure!!

The beginning was bit hard to get through but it definitely got better the further I got!!

Het eerste deel van het boek was spannend, maar zodra duidelijk werd wie de daders (waarschijnlijk) waren vond ik het boek wat saai worden.

For me, this one was a bit of a slog for at least half the book. I was reading it in fits and starts and I found the main character so unlikable that towards middle and end I found myself getting real life angry at her decisions. Then, I realised, that was kind of the point.

With a book like this, with her kind of character, I wasn't expecting as much depth as I got. I thought this would be a fun and light read, police after a killer, everything turns out peachy in the end. This isn't that kind of book and it took me a long time to realise that.

Despite despising the main character I flew through the last half of the book quite quickly and looking back on it I can appreciate the author crafting such a flawed but ultimately human character. I didn't agree with the characters decisions but the point was that I don't have to. If I said any more I'd be going into spoiler territory. I'm giving this an extra star because the last quarter was compelling enough that it made me want to continue the series.

This book tries to be a serial killer thriller, a courtroom thriller and a psychological thriller all at once.

Suffice to say, it fails at all three.

Faith Saunders is driving home (drunk) from her sister's party, after having a massive argument with her. She hits something, but doesn't see a body, and parks in an isolated town to sleep it off and wait out the storm. She is awoken by a girl asking to be let into the car. Faith refuses. She sees the girl taken away by two men as she drives off.

Faith is a weak and pitiful woman, and desperately fears her husband will leave her if he finds out she was driving drunk with their daughter in the car. He had an affair, and she is still paranoid and resentful about this. So she remains silent about what she saw. When she recognises the girl in a missing poster, she frets and frets about speaking up. The choice is taken away from her by her daughter, who wasn't asleep in the car after all, and saw everything.

Even so, Faith still lies to the police. It turns out her daughter didn't see the second man, so Faith stays silent about that too! The detectives soon find a viable suspect, little realising that their case is being jeopardised by their star witness, the insufferable, moronic Faith, who is more concerned about her husband leaving her than anything else. She's also worried about the fact the killers know who she is.

You would think that having two killers know who the star witness is and how to find her would be a suspenseful set-up for a thriller, but this lame-brained book completely flubs it. Other than occasionally muse about doing away with Faith, Derrick and Ed do very little to be proactive about it. The focus of the book is on Detective Bryan Nill's investigation into finding the killers. But we the reader already know there are two killers and their identities. And Bryan's breakthroughs in the case are all completely coincidental. So there's zero suspense.

The other focus is on Faith and how her web of lies and her alcoholism leads to her undoing. But even this doesn't play out believably. Faith is presented as your typical functional alcoholic. Yet as the book progresses, apparently her alcoholism is so bad that she would

Spoiler

accidentally shoot her husband in a case of mistaken identity, thinking the killers are after her.

Who Faith is at the start of the book doesn't entirely gel with the way she is at the end.

I also questioned the veracity of allowing the identity of major witnesses in a murder trial to be made available to the public. (One of the major contributing factors to Faith's psychological breakdown.) Or a defence lawyer being allowed to badger a child witness to the point where she's self-harming right on the stand! They both seemed screamed, "Law suit!" to me.

This so-called thriller was very slow-paced, repetitive and free of any suspense or any plot twists. For me, a major element for any thriller to work is having a sense that your protagonist is in real, palpable danger. Other than being a complete numbskull who is at risk of harm through being too stupid to live, I didn't get that sense with Faith at all. The whole book just...happened, with no suspense or any feelings of urgency. It was a real waste of time.

It looks as if Jilliane Hoffman was dropped by her English/American publishers after this travesty. There seems to be a couple of subsequent books she has written, but they've only been published in German. I doubt I would have bothered anyway. Which is a pity, because her first book Retribution was an absolute corker.