Mort Blanche

Mort Blanche - Caroline Terrée 3,5 stars.

Even though the case is nothing special (no gory murders or strange kidnappings), the plot keeps you wanting to keep reading until you reach the end. Everything seems to be an sad accident, but we soon start to see that there's more to this situation than that. Without revealing any spoilers, I found the whole plot, especially the ending, to be quite realistic, except for how fast everything was solved. Also, there's a very convenient plot twist towards the end, without which the investigation would have taken many more days. This was the only thing that truly disappointed me. Maybe if the team had found that vital clue in some other way, everything would have appeared to be less perfect.

We don't see much character development in this book. The main characters (the team memebers) are already known and the rest (case-specific characters) are rather flat. To be honest, this is a case where having round secondary characters is not necessary. Their past is not important; only their present matters. Unfortunately, lack of character development means that nothing more about the main character is revealed. For those who haven't read the first three books, Kate is someone who has a mysterious past.

Even though it's a YA book (or at least it seemed to be a YA book to me, maybe because the three books that have been translated into Spanish were publised as YA), all the characters are adult and the case is definitely aimed at all audiences. Also, even if French is not your first language, it's very easy to follow what's going on. The one good thing about there only being three books in Spanish is that it forces me to practise French if I want to read the rest of the series.