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| Dig Two Graves |
When former Olympic medal-winning athlete and single father Ethan "Hercules" Holt finds his daughter Skip missing, realisation dawns on him that she was probably kidnapped. He is devastated of course, but is very soon confronted with a series of taxing tasks that stretch him to the limits of his endurance, as even more shockingly he finds them to be modern, twisted versions of the Twelve Labours of Hercules, written out in cryptic clues by someone who appears to have followed every waking step of Ethan. The story has an interesting premise, and author Kim Powers manages to convincingly create a fog of unease that brings to mind Harlan Coben's domestic thrillers, but you know what? I wasn't impressed. A good suspense novel has to be believable at some point, but the central mystery surrounding the 12 labours just remains a clever conceit on paper and never takes off the way it should. It just feels, well, laboured. And despite cleverly misdirecting the reader as to the identity of the kidnapper, Powers fails to cogently explain the antagonist's justification for doing so. What a cop out!
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