Rebus this ain't !! - Rated 
Stuart MacBride is good - but he's not great. His stories have very little depth and there are far too many people involved.
The main character, DS Logan MacRae, is bullied by two foul mouthed DI's. The constantly bra re-arranging Steel and jellybaby-noshing Insch. Both of these activities become very tedious after a couple of chapters.
Rebus would never have put up with being bullied by these two.
MacBride needs to give MacRae some backbone - and some personality.
Room for improvement - meanwhile a good book, but not a great one.
Best so far - Rated 
Definitely the best of the three books so far but if you haven't read the first two yet, I recommend you do so as this one will feel better if you have. I had worried at the end of the last one that McBride was getting himself into a rut of writing some pretty horrific stuff which can be unpalatable to many [and I mean really horrific!] but this one doesn't have that in the same way. Brutal crimes, yes, but he's begun to handle things differently. Bit more about real people rather than decomposing bodies. Especially good on the mental effect of rape. Still some problems remain however. First, I wish he'd drop sex crimes involving children. Also, he needs to start widening the scope of his characters. This book is good in that he does develop Insch much more and Steel becomes a bit more likeable but he'll need more staple figures if this is to become a long series. I loved the ending!!!!!!!!! Absolutely no give-aways but it lends itself brilliantly to the next novel. Need to know what happens!!!
Not fair, I think, to say he's better than Rankin. Certainly not so far. Rankin's first three or four weren't too brilliant as I recall and nowhere near as good as what he's writing now. Also, don't forget it's Rebus that's retiring, not Rankin!! Anyway, thoroughly recommended. I'm looking forward to the next one.
What rubbish! - Rated 
One can only hope the Aberdeen police either don't read this appalling novel or have a long fuse coupled with a thick skin. The Police, whether it be constables or senior officers are portrayed as incompetent and deeply unlikeable, incapable of speech unless larded with foul language. What passes as a plot is tedious and wholly unconvincing. All combining as a book to avoid at all costs.
Logan's Run - out of ideas - Rated 
I bought Macbride's first two novels and gave them glowing reviews. This time around, however, I have definitely been disappointed, and found it a real effort to read through to the end. Not far short of 600 pages it was way too long and I did not at any time feel the inclination to read 'just one more chapter' before turning out the light, as I usually do. Having finished a Michael Connelly novel prior to this, I found BROKEN SKIN to be weak in just about every department of crime series fiction. I am tiring, for example, of the author's style of mixing the narrative with the dialogue, so that all the expletives and crudities of language appear at all times; there is no division. I assume that was entirely deliberate but I just don't like it any more, it was a novelty in COLD GRANITE but that has now worn off and I am sure he should have written it in the first-person, as front man Logan McRae appears on every single page.
Then there are the characters. McRae gets more spineless with each episode, and in this third outing he spends most of his time trying to avoid confrontation with either of the two DIs he works with, or the woman and police colleague he lives with. A huge slice of the writing is allocated to police procedure but frankly there's very little of any novelty, or any interest to be honest. McRae himself has few vices, if any, and is really not that interesting a personality. The vaguely cartoonish characterisations of DI Insch and DI Steel have not been moved on at all from either of the two preceding novels, and I really grew more than tired of the writer's repeated descriptions of Insch's weight or size, and of Steel's smoking habits. The author's prose is often childish, such as when he writes: "The door burst open: DI Insch, looking very, very angry, his face swollen and red."
My biggest gripe though is Macbride's adoption of a generally lightweight script spattered with countless attempts to generate humour - rarely paying off - while the underlying themes of the crimes (rape and buggery) being investigated are unquestionably dark, unpleasant and impossible to make humourous. I am definitely no prude, but I found the emphasis on the world of sexual sadomasochism distasteful and not funny at any point, despite the writer's efforts to make it so. I have no objection to pockets of humour in violent crime novels, but Macbride lacks the skills in this department of John Connolly by way of example, and his efforts to shock or thrill fall completely flat, in my humble opinion, whereas writers such as Val McDermid have been consistently successful in this regard. As for Logan McRae, well I can think of several front characters from other crime fiction novelists who are a whole lot more interesting.
BETTER THAN EVER............................................. - Rated
MacBride can not get better than this.
I would strongly advise if you have not sampled the series that you start with the first and read on.
Herein we have the same old characters in all their glory. DI Steele excels better than ever before. DI Insch grumbles and chews his way through 600 pages.
There are numerous plots which twist and turn, but the humour is over the top. MacBride is Rebus and Terry Pratchett all in one. He takes serious topics and with outstanding, realistic characters and more than its fair share of laughter, makes a thoroughly readable book which is impossible to put down.
Seriously looking forward to number 4 in the series.
Keep them coming Mr MacBride before I start to go through withdrawal.
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