Perfect Silence is the fourth book in the DI Callanach series, and full disclaimer; I haven’t read the other three. Luc Callanach is the hero of the title, a French former Interpol officer now working as a detective inspector on the Major Incident Team (MIT) in Edinburgh, Scotland. There are quite a few references to events happening to Luc, his boss Ava and other members of the MIT, but I didn’t find it was necessary to have read previous books to understand what was going on here. This stands very well standalone.
Now, I read this book without knowing the series name, and went to look it up so I could say where it fit in the series, and I have to say I’m completely confused, because Luc Callanach was at best a secondary character. The primary protagonist was Ava Turner, the DCI, and I fully expected this to be the DCI Ava Turner series. If you’re a big fan of Luc Callanach and you read this series because of how much you love Luc, I think you’re likely to be pretty disappointed here.
With that bemusing fact out of the way, I really enjoyed this book. It’s horrifying and macabre, with a serial killer kidnapping young women and cutting ‘dolls’ from their flesh, and a secondary case involving thrill-seeker attacks on homeless people. It’s a juicy read at a little over 430 pages and full of accurate (so far as I can tell) police procedural and investigative work, complete with the delays, red tape and bureaucracy that goes along with that. If you enjoy a good crime thriller or good British police drama in the vein of the TV series Line of Duty, you’ll really enjoy this.
However, for the weird fact that the series protagonist isn’t actually the main character in this book, and in fact the whole arc and character growth is about Ava, I’m going to knock it down to four stars.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for review through NetGalley.