Review: Dead List (Calladine & Bayliss, #3) by Helen H. Durrant

Print Length: 195 pages

Publisher: Joffe Books (September 12, 2015)

From Goodreads.com:  An unlikely serial killer with a bucket list of victims . . .

Police partners, D.I. Calladine and D.S. Ruth Bayliss battle a murderer who is working their way through a list of victims. Each murder is meticulously planned and unique, and a tarot card is left at the scene of the crime.

When two children disappear in the local area, the stakes are raised and the team are baffled by the link between the crimes. Calladine and Bayliss race against time to prevent any more carnage.

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My Rating: 3 stars out of 5

To be honest this wasn't my favorite in the series (at least of the ones I've read thus far). The writing was still strong, and the plot-line (having a sort of bucket list of people to kill) was unique and engaging. I liked being inside of the killer's mind for this one - being able to understand their motivation for the killings and see the way they were able to rationalize it being okay in their own mind. 

What I was less thrilled with was Calladine and his brash personality. For some reason, his character grated on my nerves more in this book than in the others that I have read. For a cop, he doesn't seem to have much of a backbone when it comes to the women in his life. I also don't remember Greco's character being quite so pig-headed either (I remember him quite well from his own series of books). It's understandable that two "alpha male" types would butt heads, but this was just going above and beyond the norm, why wouldn't they work together and pool their collective resources when the cases were so obviously linked? 

Not to mention the fact that I found it a bit inconceivable that the killer was able to accomplish everything they did only to be depicted as "weak and frail and near death" the moment the police tracked them down. I understand to an extent the reasoning behind it all, but it made for rather seemingly sudden 180 turn about in that character. 

Overall, it wasn't a bad addition to the series, and I will definitely continue on with these characters in the books that I haven't already read. 

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                                  Dead List is available from Amazon.com
                                   (for free if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited)