| Publisher | Headline |
|---|---|
| Date Published | 15 June 2023 |
| ISBN-10 | 1472282906 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1472282903 |
| Format | hardcover |
| Pages | 400 |
| Price | £ 10.99 |
Open Season
by
The aftermath of a massive storm reveals a clandestine burial in the grounds of a luxury hotel. At the same time, the hunt continues for a missing crime writer believed to be implicated in the murders of several elderly people near the home of retired Chief Constable Bob Skinner.
Review
Open Season, the latest in the long-running Bob Skinner series, starts with a family gathering at the luxurious Black Shield Lodge hotel in Perthshire to celebrate the 21st birthday of Skinner’s son Ignatio.
Mia McCullough, Ignatio’s mother, has recently inherited a lifetime interest in the hotel, along with a multi-million-pound legacy and an outright gift of the radio station where she met her late husband, Cameron, known to everyone as Grandpa. The rest of Grandpa’s business empire – rumoured to have grown so large on the proceeds of crime – was left to his granddaughter and namesake, Cameron ‘Cheeky’ McCullough, married to DCI ‘Sauce’ Haddock. Are you following me so far? Oh, do keep up, it’s going to get a lot more complicated than this …
In fact, it gets so complicated that at numerous points in the story I wished Skinner’s creator, Quintin Jardine, had included both a family tree and a glossary of characters. And I’ve been following the series for 29 years! Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your opinion on info dumps), there’s now a fair amount of exposition whenever anyone is introduced, even down to things that the person being spoken to would almost certainly have known, but that’s simply a consequence of a sprawling cast, all with their own back stories that are as intertwined as a large wicker basket.
When a massive storm rips through the area, Skinner and the others wake up to the aftermath, with trees down everywhere. Then, when Skinner's young son Jazz is on a run in the forest with his half-brother Ignatio (Big Bob's son by Mia McCullough - I told you we needed a family tree!) and DCI Haddock, Jazz discovers a body, buried under an uprooted tree. Skinner’s wife Sarah conducts the autopsy and finds enough evidence to launch a murder enquiry. Then one body becomes two, complicating matters further.
While all this is going on, a separate enquiry is under way, searching for a crime writer who has disappeared after being implicated in the deaths of several elderly people near Skinner’s home. Naturally, anything in Bob Skinner’s orbit is bound to get complicated and the fact that he is now long retired from the police and running an international media group instead never seems to stop him getting involved. The two investigations are more than enough to tie the extensive cast in knots of positively Gordian proportions and did the same to my brain whenever I tried to work out what on earth was going on!
There are times since Skinner retired that I’ve felt the series has been in danger of losing the plot, especially with the few written in the first person, as they don’t work for me at all, and it’s been hard to suspend disbelief for some of the devices used to keep the former copper in the midst of police enquiries. However, with Skinner having taken temporary charge of the media empire, he does have more of an excuse for being in the thick of things. I’ve always enjoyed the massive cast of characters, and still do, but there are now so many of them that I’m serious about the books needing some sort of cast list, if only to help newcomers, as well as acting as an aide memoire for longer-standing fans.
Open Season is hugely convoluted and for me the identity of one of the perpetrators came so far out of left field that a big chunk of the plot ended up feeling far too contrived, as if someone was plucked out of mid-air to take the fall. Despite that, I enjoyed the latest story in a series that I just can’t drop, no matter how often I’ve muttered darkly about filing for a divorce from Big Bob. Jardine certainly knows how to tell a good story and there seems to be plenty of life left both in Skinner and the rest of his former colleagues in what’s now Police Scotland.
Mia McCullough, Ignatio’s mother, has recently inherited a lifetime interest in the hotel, along with a multi-million-pound legacy and an outright gift of the radio station where she met her late husband, Cameron, known to everyone as Grandpa. The rest of Grandpa’s business empire – rumoured to have grown so large on the proceeds of crime – was left to his granddaughter and namesake, Cameron ‘Cheeky’ McCullough, married to DCI ‘Sauce’ Haddock. Are you following me so far? Oh, do keep up, it’s going to get a lot more complicated than this …
In fact, it gets so complicated that at numerous points in the story I wished Skinner’s creator, Quintin Jardine, had included both a family tree and a glossary of characters. And I’ve been following the series for 29 years! Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your opinion on info dumps), there’s now a fair amount of exposition whenever anyone is introduced, even down to things that the person being spoken to would almost certainly have known, but that’s simply a consequence of a sprawling cast, all with their own back stories that are as intertwined as a large wicker basket.
When a massive storm rips through the area, Skinner and the others wake up to the aftermath, with trees down everywhere. Then, when Skinner's young son Jazz is on a run in the forest with his half-brother Ignatio (Big Bob's son by Mia McCullough - I told you we needed a family tree!) and DCI Haddock, Jazz discovers a body, buried under an uprooted tree. Skinner’s wife Sarah conducts the autopsy and finds enough evidence to launch a murder enquiry. Then one body becomes two, complicating matters further.
While all this is going on, a separate enquiry is under way, searching for a crime writer who has disappeared after being implicated in the deaths of several elderly people near Skinner’s home. Naturally, anything in Bob Skinner’s orbit is bound to get complicated and the fact that he is now long retired from the police and running an international media group instead never seems to stop him getting involved. The two investigations are more than enough to tie the extensive cast in knots of positively Gordian proportions and did the same to my brain whenever I tried to work out what on earth was going on!
There are times since Skinner retired that I’ve felt the series has been in danger of losing the plot, especially with the few written in the first person, as they don’t work for me at all, and it’s been hard to suspend disbelief for some of the devices used to keep the former copper in the midst of police enquiries. However, with Skinner having taken temporary charge of the media empire, he does have more of an excuse for being in the thick of things. I’ve always enjoyed the massive cast of characters, and still do, but there are now so many of them that I’m serious about the books needing some sort of cast list, if only to help newcomers, as well as acting as an aide memoire for longer-standing fans.
Open Season is hugely convoluted and for me the identity of one of the perpetrators came so far out of left field that a big chunk of the plot ended up feeling far too contrived, as if someone was plucked out of mid-air to take the fall. Despite that, I enjoyed the latest story in a series that I just can’t drop, no matter how often I’ve muttered darkly about filing for a divorce from Big Bob. Jardine certainly knows how to tell a good story and there seems to be plenty of life left both in Skinner and the rest of his former colleagues in what’s now Police Scotland.
Reviewed 09 December 2024 by Linda Wilson
