Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsFeeble. Don't waste your time
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 June 2022
Congratulations to Dani Oakley (or Danica Britton) for making a success for herself under the pseodonym D S Butler. Most wannabe-writers fail, but she appears to be enjoying a lot of success. At the time of posting this review, On Cold Ground is enjoying high rankings and good reviews:-
Best Sellers Rank: 165 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
No.3 in Conspiracy Thrillers
No.6 in Kidnapping Crime Fiction
No.13 in Women Sleuths (Kindle Store)
I have only read one of her novels - this one - and while I did at least finish it (which is unusual for me these days), I have to say that it will be my one and only dip of my toe in the waters of the D S Butler portfolio. That's because the motivation to keep reading - for me, that is - was to find out "whodunit" and nothing else. To satisfy my curiosity. My earlier guess at the killer's ID had been correct, although it wasn't that difficult. So this, for me. proved to be all about the destination and not the journey.
As for the writing skills on display here, this was the book's biggest weakness. For what is basically a story for grown-ups, the style was simplistic, chatty and could have been written by a teenager. There was a lot of repetitiveness, for example the bit about the post-it note found on DS Hart's desk. The dialogue, which seemed to take up 90% of the writing, was plain vanilla at the best of times and, as the conclusion neared, became borderline absurd. There was nothing challenging in the articulation, no multi-layering, no depth and no breadth. Just paragraphs, sentences, and words.
The remaining 10% - the narrative - was amateurish. There was next to no imagery to grasp on to, no building of images in the reader's mind of faces, of personalities or landscape and surroundings. It was difficult to see anybody or anything. The only face I kept visualising was that of the author herself, typing away at her keyboard. I suspect this story didn't take very long to write, and required little in the way of research.
Characterisation was again of a low standard. I knew nothing about DS Karen Hart before reading this book, and I closed the final page knowing very little more. As for the various other characters - and there were quite a few - it was difficult to engage or bond with any of them, to like or dislike, to develop an interest in.
So in the end, the story is the one element to have held my attention. Here we have a police procedural in which the procedures felt utterly unconvincing and exposed what I believe is the author's inexperience of investigating multiple murders from the perspective of the police. The killer is given a rather corny cachet of "The Cleanser" which again exposed the lack of original and creative thinking on the author's part, given that this novel was published in 2021. It felt out-of-date within a few pages of the beginning.
I received this title free as part of my membership of Kindle Unlimited. You know the old saying "There's no such thing as a free lunch" - well, if you're offered a book for nothing, ask yourself if it will be worth the investment of your time. This one was absolutely not worth mine.
In spite of these negative thoughts, the book's a top seller. I can only assume that readers today are more easily satisfied than they used to be. This is really very ordinary with almost no redeeming benefits at all.
