Book Review of Broken Glass by Alexander Hartung

Goodreads Summary: One murdered, one missing. Both are almost identical.

Detective Nik Pohl has seen every shade of darkness in his career. Not used to playing by the rules, he finds himself frozen out by his superiors. What’s worse, now he’s being blackmailed by a shadowy businessman into investigating a seemingly crimeless disappearance.

A young woman, Viola, left her home months ago, leaving a letter to her parents saying she wouldn’t be coming back. With a little digging, Nik discovers the case of an almost identical-looking woman who went missing in similar circumstances. There’s one important difference: that woman is dead. Viola may still be alive… but perhaps not for much longer.

When Nik is viciously attacked, it becomes clear that whoever is behind Viola’s disappearance has some high-level connections, and they will stop at nothing to shut him down. But he’s in too deep, and the clock is ticking. He has to find Viola, and her captors before it’s too late.

Goodreads Rating: 3.83 with just under 1,000 ratings

Genre Listing: Mystery, Thriller, Fiction

Goodreads Challenge: 32/50

2019 Reading Challenge: #17 a Detective Novel (Find the full challenge here)
Review:
Hey. Look. I read a book for the challenge, and it was a First Reads! I may have talked about the First Reads before, but basically, how it works is you sign up, and each month, you get a free kindle book that's just released or a hardback discounted. I have a massive stack of unread ones on my kindle. So yay. I read one.

One of the things I really appreciate about how Tress and I have designed the reading challenge is it's meant to get people out of their comfort zone. Broken Glass by Alexander Hartung was definitely out of my comfort zone, which is weird because I like crime related things I just don't read much of it. Broken Glass starts off a little slow. Nik seemed like a disgruntled cop with anger issues and wasn't overly interesting to me at first. It really didn't pick up for me until he got really into Viola's case. Viola's case isn't the only one discussed. Many things need to be solved, and Viola's story is just a starting point.


As the story gets more in-depth, and towards the end, it's evident that Nik has some serious issues that's made him kind of the good cop gone rogue. He's definitely not corrupt, but he does things his own way and doesn't play by the rules. I think this aspect of the story is a little cliche, but once I got interested in the story, I didn't really mind. It did make for some predictable plot twists, however. Balthasar and Jon as characters were ok. Balthasar actually reminded me of Woody, the Coroner from Psych. His oddities and the way he acted made it so I couldn't picture anyone but Woody. Jon, I could take or leave. He's kind of mysterious and just there footing the bill. I'm curious to see if more of his story comes out in the series.


I think that Viola's story kind of gets lost in the mix. She's the reason that Jon reaches out to Nik, but there are so many other crimes and surrounding things that overshadow finding her. It's mentioned a lot, and eventually, she's given some justice, but I feel like presenting her case as the main one is a little misleading. Honestly, after Nik goes undercover and solves that case, the story surrounding Viola loses momentum.


Overall, I liked the story, and I'd read another book in the series. I don't know that I'd go out of my way to pick the next one up, but if it showed up in my Kindle recommendations, I wouldn't be upset about it. It's a decent start to a series and could get really interesting.