Stopped Listening With an Hour Left

This novel started out promising as it seemed to be developing a character, a reluctant police officer investigating a horrific set of crimes. Character development is often left wanting in police/murder mysteries. It even had an interesting structure going back in time (20 years to when these gruesome murders started). However, one third into the book the whole narrative gets bogged down and plods with excessive introductions of excessive red herrings and subplots. As a person who does not speak or read Spanish, I became very confused keeping track of who was who. Part of my confusion I attribute to the narrator who pretty much had the same tone of voice for everyone. I THINK the murderer was revealed just before the last hour was started counting down and if there’s another REAL murderer, I found myself not caring one iota as the one arrested was not a noteworthy character previously if even mentioned. That is why I said to hell with it, I’m not listening anymore. And then there’s dreams revealing clues. That’s the cheesiest plot device ever. And let’s talk about the old detective who devised his own profiling system but the reader never really is illuminated or how it works. Part of me wants to return this for credit but the other parts feels it would be cheating.