First Blood
Angela Marsons
Kim meets her Halesowen team
First Blood is #0.5 in the Goodreads listing of Angela Marsons Kim Stone series. It's a prequel that describes the first few days of Kim's start at the Halesowen police office, with her four-person team: Kevin Dawson, Stacey Poole, Bryant (whose first name is not used), and Kim herself. In publication order, however, it is the exact middle of the series, having been published between #11 Child's Play and #12 Killing Mind of the 23-novel series. I prefer to read a series in publication order -- it ensures that when you read a book you know everything the author had told her readers at the time she published that book.
I read the first eleven Kim Stone novels. After reading Child's Play, I decided to quit. As I explained, I didn't want "to keep reading what feels like the same novel over and over again." I decided, however, to read the prequel. It would have been next on my list. And since it was a prequel I hoped that it would not feel like the same Kim Stone novel I had read eleven times.
It was not to be. It's basically the same story. There are some interesting little tidbits of background about Kim and her team that I had not known before.
An additional disappointment was that Marsons does something that mystery writers often do, which never fails to annoy me: she dangles a diversion in front of the reader. That is, in order to prevent the reader figuring out who the "true" criminal is before the Big Reveal, she hints broadly at another character. Then at the end she uses her magic author powers to make the criminal some other random character, elevating one obscure clue dropped in chapter 32 to be the only one that actually mattered.
It didn't work this time. The promotion of the diversion was so obvious that I thought to myself, "That can't be who it is. Marsons is pushing them too hard. She's trying to fool us." And I was right.
So, now I am really, REALLY, truly done with Kim Stone. It's not a bad mystery/thriller series, but there's not enough there there for 23 novels. Half a dozen would have been about right.