Review: Dark Objects

Dark Objects by Simon Toyne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

With each series he’s worked on in the last decade, Simon Toyne has shifted more towards realism than the intense modern fantasy thrillers of the Sanctus trilogy, a series that I’ll not soon forget. This book is the first of a new series with protagonist Laughton Rees, a young profiler with a terribly troubled past - like Barry Allen, she saw her mum’s murder, but unlike Barry Allen, she wound up so traumatized that she lived on the streets, in shelters, and had a baby at a very young age too. Luckily for her, she’s been able to rise up and make a life for herself, but her past traumas will all come back on this case. It’s a very peculiar kind of mystery novel where the actual murder story is so dry that it winds up being overshadowed by a large number of competing storylines, including the secret truth behind why Laughton’s book on profiling is on prominent display at the scene of the crime, or her struggles to keep up with her daughter’s emotional issues due to school bullying, and the backstory of DCI Tannahill Khan, who is Pakistani and grew up very ashamed of that fact thanks to rampant racism. This book is a bit hit or miss for me, but it’s Toyne, so the hits are pretty strong. And I’ve already gotten started on the sequel, so we’ll see how that goes soon enough.

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