Never got thrilling or gripping, I was totally bored and really should have quit it ( )

There were many excellent things about this novel: the writing; the characters of Maggie the PI, Robin's parents, and Robin herself, who reassesses her past actions and decisions and grow as a result. There was also humour in details like the fact that Robin's parents' house is always kept at a tropical temperature.

On the other hand some of the characters were not so well drawn: Luke was cartoonishly nasty, Adrian saintly, and the reader didn't get to know Corinna and Josh enough to share Robin's feelings about them at the end. There were also big chunks of plot that went nowhere, red herrings I suppose, but red herrings that took up a lot of space. Finally there was that old plot device, 'the big secret' which was constantly referred to and eventually revealed in a big infodump in order to make the ending more believable.

Nevertheless, this was a page turner for me and I will look out for more by this author. ( )

I am profoundly disappointed with this book. I threw it across the room after I finished and I'm donating it as soon as possible. I adore Lucie Whitehouse and I was looking forward to reading this but it was just rubbish! So many characters to keep track of, three major plot-lines that were all over the place, the protagonist was completely unlikeable and I really should have trusted my intuition and stopped reading it. I thought everything would be tied up nicely in a clever ending (in usual Whitehouse style) and that it was all going to be worth it. It wasn't. Disappointed. ( )

I've really enjoyed a few of Lucie Whitehouse's books in the past so I was keen to read Critical Incidents, hopefully the first of a trilogy featuring DCI Robin Lyons. I certainly felt there was a lot more for Robin to give in future stories so I hope to be able to read more about her.

In this book Robin has been dismissed from the Met where she was a DCI in the homicide unit. This forces her to return to her family home in Birmingham with her 13 year old daughter, Lennie. This is exactly what Robin doesn't want as she finds it hard living with her parents again, especially her mother who she clashes with a lot. She takes a job with a family friend, Maggie, who runs a private investigation business which is perfect for Robin in many ways as she can use her investigative skills, but she also runs into trouble as she frequently forgets she's not with the police any more!

Coupled with the investigations that she undertakes is a tragic incident relating to Robin's friend, Corinna, and her family. I thought it was really clever how the author weaved together all the strands in ways that I hadn't really contemplated. I also thought the characterisations were spot on, and although Robin isn't exactly easy to like, I found myself sympathetic to her on many occasions.

Critical Incidents is an excellent story. It needed a bit of concentration at times but I found when I got stuck in and read large chunks at a time I was completely absorbed in Robin's various investigations and the complications of her private life. The writing is sharp and engrossing too. I read it in the space of a couple of days and really enjoyed it. I do hope there will be more outings for Robin. I will certainly read them. Lucie Whitehouse is a fabulous writer. ( )

Robin Lyons has everything going for her; a job with the Metropolitan Police, a daughter successfully navigating private education, a long term best friend and a partner who thinks she’s wonderful. A disorderly conduct meeting later, she is unemployed, hasn’t bothered paying her parking tickets, and is forced to move from London to Birmingham back into her parent’s house. Her thirteen year old, Lennie, is taken away from her friends and the life she knows and understandably doesn’t react well, making Robin’s guilt over what happened stab deeper. She can’t find the chemistry to love the man who wants to love, provide and care for her, which adds to the guilt as he and her daughter got on so well, yet she chose to leave him. From the bunk beds they have to share in her parent’s spare room the atmosphere sits heavily, made worse by the near constant ability to be irritated with her mother. From her prestigious job, she has to take what she can, which turns out to be working for a friend catching benefit fraudsters in a private investigation agency. Her existence is in the process of change and everything is harder than it used to be. Life is about to get even worse when that fantastic best friend she had appears to have been murdered, her house set ablaze and her husband, the potential suspect, missing.
You can empathise to some extent with the difficulties Robin is facing, although hopefully most of us haven’t had it quite that bad all at once, even if it seems she has made some odd choices along the way, she explains herself well and I think she made them morally rather than emotionally. As a result I really wanted to see if, by the end of the book, her life would turn out for the better and even though I found her a difficult character to like at times, all the way through I was hoping for the best for her, and her teenage daughter who was primarily a victim of her parental choices.
You can’t tell an ex-Homicide detective not to get involved in their missing best friend, despite that no longer being Robin’s job to deal with, as well as emotionally maybe not best placed with the huge responsibility and the need to be unbiased about the evidence. What Robin’s job now is to do with is spending time sitting in her car bored, staking out people working while claiming to be too sick. The second strand of the story is also part of her private detective work, which involves a distressed parent with a missing daughter that they need to try and locate. When all is revealed, will these stories converge?
The book includes a splattering of quite funny humour, particularly in the beginning. I found the story slightly confusing initially, as there is a lot going on and quite a few people to get to know. The book didn’t really take off for me until the last quarter when I became really interested in the story and invested in extra reading to find out what was going to happen. My favourite aspects to the story were the way grief was portrayed and examined while still fitting the storyline all the way through and the personal strength that Robin has to achieve in a typical male dominated industry together with her bravery. ( )