Just finished this doorstop of a novel. It’s a little daunting, weighing in at almost 600 pages, and the question is ‘is it worth investing my time in such a long book?’I wish someone had told me that back in February when I started reading it, because the honest answer is ‘no, not really’. The premise of the novel is quite straightforward – a serial killer is murdering people for the purpose of filming their deaths and incorporating the imagery into a new computer game that he’s creating. A local cop is assigned to the case, and he becomes romantically linked with a young expert on history who is asked to advise. Needless to say, things go bad, and I don’t think I’m giving too much away to say that this is standard thriller stuff – the literary equivalent of a Roland Emmerich film. It is, to its credit, incredibly readable; although some of the dialogue is appalling. It’s a thriller novel for people who don’t read many thriller novels. *****