
I like Karin Slaughter's Will Trent series. Slaughter's novels aren't great literature, but her writing is good, her characters are interesting and she tells a good story. Crime fiction has long been my choice for fluffy, escapist reading and Slaughter is one of the few contemporary American crime fiction writers whose works I enjoy. There's every chance I'll tire of the series at some point - as I have of other crime fiction series - but at the moment I'm a fan. That said, I'm not a fan of this particular work, which is more an advertisement for the next book in the series than anything else. I presume that in the e-book publishing world, a teaser short story or novella with an extract from the next novel in a series is a successful marketing strategy. However, it's a marketing strategy I can live without. Apart from the extraordinary implausibility of the plot, there's nothing inherently wrong with the novella, but I'm cross with myself for having paid to download what is essentially an advertisement. It won't stop me from reading the next novel in the series, but I'm going to resist falling for this strategy again.