The Nighthawk - Louise Mullins: A Book Review

As far as psychological thrillers go The Nighthawk by Louise Mullins ticks all the boxes. The story unfolds through a series of characters, where each chapter is shown from a different perspective spanning over many years. The ‘present day’ detectives working together to solve a murder case, which on its own reads like a typical murder mystery novel, but then in between the ‘present day’ chapters, there is the story of a long-ago, never forgotten case that has become a local legend of sorts being unravelled by two writers seeking to expose the truth. This is not a simple novel with a story being told from A to Z. There are multiple stories intertwined, past and present and the reader really needs to pay attention to avoid becoming jumbled and knotting up the lines of each subplot.

At times it can feel like a frustrating roller coaster, particularly in the beginning, where you can’t trust the curves and drops in the plot. Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out and you know where the story is going, you’re thrown yet another curveball and you have to reprogram your thinking in order to keep up, which I at times felt I was suffering a psychological whiplash, whereupon I had to put the book down in order to recover before continuing on. It becomes very fast paced around the 10% mark and I found that more than once I was speed reading in an attempt to ‘get back’ to a particular character, only to find I’d skimmed over something important and would need to go back and read it again slowly. I particularly found that I would often skim over the ‘official documents’ at the end of some of the chapters, even though they added authenticity and believability of the story.

Personally, I found it difficult to keep up with all the different characters, their families, sexual orientation and the time in which they were in (past/present), especially as I had no previous information from reading the other 3 novels in the series. I think it would be easier to keep track if the beginning of each chapter had a time stamp instead of just a past/present/6 months later. Some of the names were also very similar (such as Alys and Elys), which added to the difficulty of keeping track. I’m not sure if I missed it somewhere along the line, but the officers rankings were just shown as DI/DS/DC and I had to look up what the initials stood for and what ranking that made them. People who read a lot of crime novels likely already know the detective rankings and initials, but as someone who has not read crime for many years, I was a bit lost. In saying that, each character’s personality truly shone and was not only believable, but easy to empathise with and relate to (despite their obvious differences in personality and thought process). I especially liked Kerry-Ann and her soft heart and way of thinking.

In the days before I was in debilitating pain, or on copious pain killers (both of which make it difficult to follow a dense or complex plot line) I would have found this book impossible to put down. This is not a book you can read half asleep or while you’re thinking about your grocery list. This is a novel you can truly get lost in, but you have to pay attention. Skimming over chapters won’t work. Every line drives the plot forward and holds a small piece of information imperative to the storyline. Anyone who is into crime or psychological thrillers will find this book a true page turner. It’s one of those books that has you thinking of nothing else, even long after its final page is turned. While this book can be read as a stand alone, I would recommend reading the prior books in the series, mainly in order to build up your ability to recognise the main characters amongst the sea of ‘new’ characters that will only appear in this book in regards to this specific case the detectives are working on. I have not yet read the previous books in the series, which is another reason I think I found it difficult to follow which character was which. I’d like to read the series from the beginning and then re-read this book to see if it makes it any easier to follow. I give this book 4 stars, only because I did find it difficult to follow with so many characters and time periods, but as I mentioned before, I do think this is mainly due to my individual situation and likely wouldn’t be so difficult for the average reader.