This one was an unpleasant read, because of what Halley had to go through. I was debating whether to stop reading roughly halfway through, because the book was getting a bit tiresome as it was all just 'a bit too much'. It just got harder and harder to engage in that critically important willing suspension of disbelief. A key thought I couldn't push away was that if the main crook had actually behaved the way he was described in the book, if he'd actually been that evil and irrational and open about his crimes, then there'd have been no book because he'd have been murdered by one of his victims a looong time ago. So the crook was not plausible, making the whole setup not plausible. Presumably less-extreme versions of

mr. McCusker

do exist, but that's the point - they're less extreme, less stupid and impulsive, more clever - or they don't exist for long.

However it must be said that the writing style was somewhat reminiscent of the older Francis' works.