Taylor Stevens – The Catch
Posted 26th September 2014
Category: Reviews Genres: 2010s, Angst, Crime, Social, Thriller
1 Comment
All aboard.
Publisher: Crown (Random House)
Pages: 356
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-385-34893-5
First Published: 1st January 2014
Date Reviewed: 25th September 2014
Rating: 3/5
When Munroe is employed to join Leo’s team on the ship in east Africa, she quickly realises that she hasn’t been told everything about what’s going on. She’s been kept in the dark – and kept out of the payment, too. When the ship is hijacked it’s time to reveal her true colours to Leo and the crew, and time to try and find out what happened. She doesn’t care what happened to Leo, but she feels for his wife and Victor, a kind team mate, and whilst she could leave them to fate, she’ll stay to help.
The Catch is the fourth book in the Vanessa Michael Munroe series. Whilst fair, it pales in comparison to the other books, especially as the previous, The Doll, was so exceptionally good.
The story itself is okay, but there isn’t enough of it and so the narrative has been padded out with repeated details. It’s both a case of necessary filler content and lacklustre editing. Repeated phrases and info-dumps slow the pace to a halt in many places and it may prove difficult to get through a number of chapters and work out exactly what’s happening. There are a great many characters in this book.
However Michael is as good as always, straddling the fence between good and bad, her background continuing to have an affect on her. In The Catch the reader sees her weaknesses – whereas she mostly escapes unscathed, here she is wounded badly and so Stevens is able to explore her willpower further than ever. The wounds are a bit of a problem, as they fall under the repetition – Munroe spends most of the book in pain and we know about it – but it does fill in for the previous occasions. And because Stevens has always managed to have Munroe escape unscathed without it seeming convenient, it is excellent that here she’s allowed the reader to see what happens when she is harmed.
The book feels more a standalone than the others; Bradford is not here and Munroe’s dealings with Leo are new and presumably not to be continued. Certainly it seems like a spin-off of sorts, illustrating what Munroe gets up to without her ‘usual’ team. We may have known she took on similar jobs, but this goes one further.
The Catch may not sport a particularly interesting story, and it most definitely is not the first Munroe book a reader should choose, but it does give you more insight into Munroe.
I received this book for review from the publisher.
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September 26, 2014, 10:13 pm
I would like to try this author’s work at some point. It’s too bad this one wasn’t better.