What do you think?
Rate this book
Roy Grace #9
Dead Man's Time
In Dead Man's Time, the latest from international bestselling author Peter James, Roy Grace finds himself up against that most dangerous of all adversaries—a man with fury in his heart who has nothing to lose.
New York, 1922. Five-year-old Gavin Daly and his seven-year-old sister, Aileen, are boarding the SS Mauretania to Dublin—and safety. Their mother has been shot and their Irish mobster father abducted. Suddenly, a messenger hands Gavin a piece of paper on which are written four names and eleven numbers, a cryptic message that will haunt him all his life, and his father's pocket watch. As the ship sails, Gavin watches Manhattan fade into the dusk and makes a promise, that one day he will return and find his father.
Brighton, 2012. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace investigates a savage burglary in Brighton, in which an old lady is murdered and £10m of antiques have been taken, including a rare vintage watch. To Grace's surprise, the antiques are unimportant to her family—it is the watch they want back. As his investigation probes deeper, he realizes he has kicked over a hornets nest of new and ancient hatreds. At its heart is one man, Gavin Daly, the dead woman's ninety-five-year-old brother. He has a score to settle and a promise to keep—both of which lead to a murderous trail linking the antiques world of Brighton, the crime fraternity of Spain's Marbella, and New York.
Roy Grace, in a race against the clock to stop another killing, has met his most dangerous adversary yet.
New York, 1922. Five-year-old Gavin Daly and his seven-year-old sister, Aileen, are boarding the SS Mauretania to Dublin—and safety. Their mother has been shot and their Irish mobster father abducted. Suddenly, a messenger hands Gavin a piece of paper on which are written four names and eleven numbers, a cryptic message that will haunt him all his life, and his father's pocket watch. As the ship sails, Gavin watches Manhattan fade into the dusk and makes a promise, that one day he will return and find his father.
Brighton, 2012. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace investigates a savage burglary in Brighton, in which an old lady is murdered and £10m of antiques have been taken, including a rare vintage watch. To Grace's surprise, the antiques are unimportant to her family—it is the watch they want back. As his investigation probes deeper, he realizes he has kicked over a hornets nest of new and ancient hatreds. At its heart is one man, Gavin Daly, the dead woman's ninety-five-year-old brother. He has a score to settle and a promise to keep—both of which lead to a murderous trail linking the antiques world of Brighton, the crime fraternity of Spain's Marbella, and New York.
Roy Grace, in a race against the clock to stop another killing, has met his most dangerous adversary yet.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published June 6, 2013
805 people are currently reading
3423 people want to read
About the author
Peter James
243 books3,646 followersPeter James is a global bestselling author, best known for writing crime and thriller novels, and the creator of the much-loved Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. With a total of 21 Sunday Times No. 1s under his belt, he has achieved global book sales of over 23 million copies to date and has been translated into 38 languages.
Synonymous with plot-twisting page-turners, Peter has garnered an army of loyal fans throughout his storytelling career – which also included stints writing for TV and producing films. He has won over 40 awards for his work, including the WHSmith Best Crime Author of All Time Award, Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger and a BAFTA nomination for The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons for which he was an Executive Producer. Many of Peter’s novels have been adapted for film, TV and stage.
Synonymous with plot-twisting page-turners, Peter has garnered an army of loyal fans throughout his storytelling career – which also included stints writing for TV and producing films. He has won over 40 awards for his work, including the WHSmith Best Crime Author of All Time Award, Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger and a BAFTA nomination for The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons for which he was an Executive Producer. Many of Peter’s novels have been adapted for film, TV and stage.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 555 reviews
June 5, 2025
Roy Grace book No. 9: is all about revenge. From the gangs of New York in the 1920s to antique dealers in the 2010s, Peter James weaves a pretty good tale weaving historic crime syndicates into suspenseful crime fiction centred on organised NY crime in the 2st century that ties into the UK! We also get to finally, possibly find out more about decades long missing wife Sandy! ..or do we? Three Stars, 7 out of 12.
2017 read
2017 read
May 14, 2019
I do like this series. I'm not a major fan of UK based crime (Billingham and Rankin apart), but I do enjoy these stories of the Brighton based cop and his sidekicks. This tale involving stolen antiques and Irish gangs of long ago is one of the best and well worth catching. I also like the background story, that's ticked along all through this series, of the missing wife of our hero Detective Roy Grace. Top class stuff.
January 29, 2022
I was really hoping not to give this one star. I wanted one star to be reserved for the life-changingly awful likes of The Alchemist. But there's just no way of getting around it, this book was utterly terrible.
Things got off to a bad start when we were informed the police officers were "on a shout - as calls to incidents were known colloquially". Gosh really? Thanks for that. Having never read or seen any police related documentary or fiction in my life, and lacking all ability to make a basic inference, it's a good thing you spelt that out for me!
Peter James? More like Peter and Jane. Unfortunately for me this was only a mere taster of the flat-footed, patronising awfulness that lay ahead.
If there's one thing I hate in books it's the reader being treated like an imbecile, and if there's another thing I hate it's awkward dialogue or thoughts that crowbar in explanations and exposition in painfully unnatural fashion. This Peter and Jane Do Policing book manages to do both those things at once, regularly.
Following an entire page of characters conversing about criminals fleeing to Spain, one tells the other something about "Marbella, Spain", because obviously intelligent adults have no idea where Marbella is, nor could they infer it from the previous context, so better spell it out. This style of writing reaches its incredible nadir when we are informed one minor character thinks another minor character is "the very double of television actor Dennis Waterman, former co-star of Minder and now of New Tricks".
I mean seriously, who talks or thinks like that!? Weirdly spelling out every reference with unnecessarily specific and laboured detail. It's only a partly rhetorical question, because I actually can think of one person who talks like that: Alan Partridge. Except when he does it, the bizarre pedantic detail is sufficiently exaggerated and surreal, and the affected, stiltedness of his speech patterns sufficiently explained by his media-habituated nature, so as to be funny. Here's it's just clunky.
In fact I don't think the prose in this book could be any more clunky if someone stood next to me while I was reading and clunked a car door shut every time I got to a full stop.
So clunky, leaden, stilted, clumsy and generally awful is the prose, that I could scarcely force myself through it, except to imagine what small giggles I might have trying to eviscerate it in review when I finished. Even that was barely enough to sustain me. For a while I tried to find a sort of 'ironic' pleasure in it by treating it as a B-movie, where appalling wooden acting (analogous to this prose) becomes a source of amusement, and at any rate, you can still enjoy the plot, or special effects, or other aspects of the movie.
But I couldn't enjoy it even ironically, and that leads me back to where I began: I didn't want to give it one star because I wanted to say, well, the prose was painfully clunky, but on the plus side the characters were quite engaging, and the plot was quite exciting and well-crafted, so overall it gets a two.
But that wouldn't be true. There is no plus side.
The characters are awful. The "villains" (to use the authors favourite word for them) are, well, "villains". They're cartoons. They're "baddies". One in particular is such a caricature it would be an exaggeration to call him two-dimensional. He barely has one dimension. He sits around and menacingly thinks of how he'll get his own back on the copper and his "bitch" girlfriend (see how bad a baddie he is, he uses bad words!) -- oh yes, needless to say he'll get the last laugh. (Another unintentional, completely humourless Partridgeism again). It's simply painful to read. He makes the baddies in children's comics look nuanced and complex.
(I won't even bother getting into the throwaway comments about how "soft bleeding-heart liberals" are always interfering with the noble coppers' quest to lock up all the villainous villains and throw away the key, (and to hell with any possibility of rehabilitation or nuance, you're either a goodie or baddie), because this review is long enough just dissecting the appalling writing, characterisation and plot without devoting further words looking at the obnoxious "bring back hanging" political undercurrent.)
Anyway, it's pretty common for books to have minor characters that are a little bit two-dimensional, because so much effort has gone into making a rich and complex main character/protagonist.
Happily, Peter James avoids this problem entirely by having a complete nonentity of a protagonist. Roy Grace has almost no discernible personality at all. He's not a brilliantly intellectual Poirot/Sherlock type. He's not a maverick, doesn't-play-by-the-rules-but-gets-results type. He's not a Reacher, muscular, uses-a-bit-of-brute-force type. He's not a Louis Theroux/Miss Marple, seems-unassuming-and-lulls-people-into-underestimating-him type. Nope, he's not really anything. Maybe some sort of dry "Standards and Policies for Standard British Policing" textbook come to life, but even that would imply he's distinctively bookish and tedious, and he's not that either, because he often grins.
(I think it's supposed to make him seem human and likeable but since he's constantly grinning in response to things that arent really funny it mostly just reinforces the sense that he's a bit of an dimwit, serving as he does as a proxy for the poor presumed-dimwitted reader.)
He's just an entirely generic cop, and equally entirely generic as a person. The closest thing to personality he displays is feeling protective of his newborn child. Which is, you know, biologically inevitable from basically every parent ever. In this book we are told he sort of likes the football but doesn't really go often because he's not that laddish. He sort of like antiques but doesn't really know much about them because he's not that cultured. He sort of works too hard and long hours but doesn't really surrender to the job because he's not that much of a workaholic. Any time there's a spectrum of character, he's bang in the middle, being neither one thing or the other. Like Spinal Tap's Derek Smalls, he lies between fire and ice, "like lukewarm water". At every stage he's just mediocre and bland.
How is there an entire series based around such a dullard nothingness in the centre of things? Oh well, perhaps it's the propulsive, fine-woven, multi-stranded, unpredictable, twisting-and-turning plotlines.
Well, no. The plot is as plodding as our PC Plod, about as exciting as his endless 8:30am briefing meetings, with their lukewarm office "banter".
The only real 'sub-plot' is a strand with his ex-wife which barely relates to anything, goes nowhere, affects nothing, and only really serves to bog down the already-tediously slow pace, and introduce a therapist character so cartoonish and cliched as to make the villain I mentioned earlier look like a three-dimensional masterpiece.
As for the main plot, once again, the sense that this book is preaching to a slightly moronic reader is overwhelming.
About half way through we are teased that there is an additional member of the villainous bad guy gang whose identity we don't know yet! A mystery antagonist whose identity the befuddled reader could scarcely dream of! Who, oh who could it be!?
Well, it could possibly be one of the cardboard cutouts whose every line of description and dialogue marks them out as a villanous bad guy wrong'un of a villain. (The turns out to be mixed up in criminality? I'm SHOCKED, truly shocked!) But just in case you didn't guess it immediately, our author drops a medium hint, then a big hint, then on page 402 such a massively, awkwardly, obviously crowbarred-in hint that I literally physically cringed and groaned in vicarious embarrasment for him. By the time this mystery is finally "revealed" some 40 pages later the apathy could hardly be more total.
It's not just the reader who is (assumed to be) too dense to connect the blatantly spelt-out. On page 111 a character spends almost a whole page explaining to Roy Grace in detail that a certain Mr Daly was involved with Irish gangs in the 1920s. (I'm not marking this as a spoiler, because it's learnt-in-chapter-one stuff.) But by page 113 our dullard hero Roy Grace has apparently forgotten this lengthy history lesson, as he ponders a row of books about Irish gangs, and thinks to himself 'Daly, by golly, that's an Irish name..!', and resolves to google the name, to see if there could possibly be a gang connection. Did this book have an editor?
Speaking of google, at one point he searches a completely common Anglosphere name and gets "over twenty hits". Seriously? Try and find any common English name that gets less than twenty thousand. Because as if the crushingly stilted sentence construction, or risibly sub-childrens-book level of characterisation aren't jarring and distracting enough, we'd better throw in some technological nonsenses to completely disrupt any tiny sense of immersion that this disaster of a book might, despite itself, have managed to generate.
Oh, and there is also the string of facepalmingly ridiculous and unbelievable but oh-so-convenient-for-the-author coincidences and connections to help destroy suspension of disbelief, too. (I thought the bit where was pretty bad, but it was outdone by the bit about , which was so mind-bogglingly stupid and awful I had another physical flinch and groan of embarrassment.)
In fact, I think if I were to try and sum up this (absurdly long) review in a nutshell, that would be it. I simply couldn't get "into" this book, because not a paragraph passes without being reminded I am reading, and reading something bad. At no point could I sink into the world of the book, my brain tuning out the I'm-processing-words-on-page process of reading, tuning out the inherent knowledge of its artifice, suspending its disbelief and going with the flow of the world the author and his language created.
Whether it was being completely unsurprised by the "reveal" of something telegraphed in flaming 18 foot high letters umpteen of the (three-page-long) chapters ago, or being completely surprised that he'd managed to produce yet another sentence even more Partridge-ly ungainly than I'd ever thought possible even two pages ago, yet alone before I picked up this waste of trees, or rolling my eyes at another paper-thin cliche piece of characterisation or laughably not-credible coincidence.... every page rattled and jarred me with some fresh new reminder that this was one of the worst books I'd ever read.
Still not as bad as the Alchemist, mind you.
Things got off to a bad start when we were informed the police officers were "on a shout - as calls to incidents were known colloquially". Gosh really? Thanks for that. Having never read or seen any police related documentary or fiction in my life, and lacking all ability to make a basic inference, it's a good thing you spelt that out for me!
Peter James? More like Peter and Jane. Unfortunately for me this was only a mere taster of the flat-footed, patronising awfulness that lay ahead.
If there's one thing I hate in books it's the reader being treated like an imbecile, and if there's another thing I hate it's awkward dialogue or thoughts that crowbar in explanations and exposition in painfully unnatural fashion. This Peter and Jane Do Policing book manages to do both those things at once, regularly.
Following an entire page of characters conversing about criminals fleeing to Spain, one tells the other something about "Marbella, Spain", because obviously intelligent adults have no idea where Marbella is, nor could they infer it from the previous context, so better spell it out. This style of writing reaches its incredible nadir when we are informed one minor character thinks another minor character is "the very double of television actor Dennis Waterman, former co-star of Minder and now of New Tricks".
I mean seriously, who talks or thinks like that!? Weirdly spelling out every reference with unnecessarily specific and laboured detail. It's only a partly rhetorical question, because I actually can think of one person who talks like that: Alan Partridge. Except when he does it, the bizarre pedantic detail is sufficiently exaggerated and surreal, and the affected, stiltedness of his speech patterns sufficiently explained by his media-habituated nature, so as to be funny. Here's it's just clunky.
In fact I don't think the prose in this book could be any more clunky if someone stood next to me while I was reading and clunked a car door shut every time I got to a full stop.
So clunky, leaden, stilted, clumsy and generally awful is the prose, that I could scarcely force myself through it, except to imagine what small giggles I might have trying to eviscerate it in review when I finished. Even that was barely enough to sustain me. For a while I tried to find a sort of 'ironic' pleasure in it by treating it as a B-movie, where appalling wooden acting (analogous to this prose) becomes a source of amusement, and at any rate, you can still enjoy the plot, or special effects, or other aspects of the movie.
But I couldn't enjoy it even ironically, and that leads me back to where I began: I didn't want to give it one star because I wanted to say, well, the prose was painfully clunky, but on the plus side the characters were quite engaging, and the plot was quite exciting and well-crafted, so overall it gets a two.
But that wouldn't be true. There is no plus side.
The characters are awful. The "villains" (to use the authors favourite word for them) are, well, "villains". They're cartoons. They're "baddies". One in particular is such a caricature it would be an exaggeration to call him two-dimensional. He barely has one dimension. He sits around and menacingly thinks of how he'll get his own back on the copper and his "bitch" girlfriend (see how bad a baddie he is, he uses bad words!) -- oh yes, needless to say he'll get the last laugh. (Another unintentional, completely humourless Partridgeism again). It's simply painful to read. He makes the baddies in children's comics look nuanced and complex.
(I won't even bother getting into the throwaway comments about how "soft bleeding-heart liberals" are always interfering with the noble coppers' quest to lock up all the villainous villains and throw away the key, (and to hell with any possibility of rehabilitation or nuance, you're either a goodie or baddie), because this review is long enough just dissecting the appalling writing, characterisation and plot without devoting further words looking at the obnoxious "bring back hanging" political undercurrent.)
Anyway, it's pretty common for books to have minor characters that are a little bit two-dimensional, because so much effort has gone into making a rich and complex main character/protagonist.
Happily, Peter James avoids this problem entirely by having a complete nonentity of a protagonist. Roy Grace has almost no discernible personality at all. He's not a brilliantly intellectual Poirot/Sherlock type. He's not a maverick, doesn't-play-by-the-rules-but-gets-results type. He's not a Reacher, muscular, uses-a-bit-of-brute-force type. He's not a Louis Theroux/Miss Marple, seems-unassuming-and-lulls-people-into-underestimating-him type. Nope, he's not really anything. Maybe some sort of dry "Standards and Policies for Standard British Policing" textbook come to life, but even that would imply he's distinctively bookish and tedious, and he's not that either, because he often grins.
(I think it's supposed to make him seem human and likeable but since he's constantly grinning in response to things that arent really funny it mostly just reinforces the sense that he's a bit of an dimwit, serving as he does as a proxy for the poor presumed-dimwitted reader.)
He's just an entirely generic cop, and equally entirely generic as a person. The closest thing to personality he displays is feeling protective of his newborn child. Which is, you know, biologically inevitable from basically every parent ever. In this book we are told he sort of likes the football but doesn't really go often because he's not that laddish. He sort of like antiques but doesn't really know much about them because he's not that cultured. He sort of works too hard and long hours but doesn't really surrender to the job because he's not that much of a workaholic. Any time there's a spectrum of character, he's bang in the middle, being neither one thing or the other. Like Spinal Tap's Derek Smalls, he lies between fire and ice, "like lukewarm water". At every stage he's just mediocre and bland.
How is there an entire series based around such a dullard nothingness in the centre of things? Oh well, perhaps it's the propulsive, fine-woven, multi-stranded, unpredictable, twisting-and-turning plotlines.
Well, no. The plot is as plodding as our PC Plod, about as exciting as his endless 8:30am briefing meetings, with their lukewarm office "banter".
The only real 'sub-plot' is a strand with his ex-wife which barely relates to anything, goes nowhere, affects nothing, and only really serves to bog down the already-tediously slow pace, and introduce a therapist character so cartoonish and cliched as to make the villain I mentioned earlier look like a three-dimensional masterpiece.
As for the main plot, once again, the sense that this book is preaching to a slightly moronic reader is overwhelming.
About half way through we are teased that there is an additional member of the villainous bad guy gang whose identity we don't know yet! A mystery antagonist whose identity the befuddled reader could scarcely dream of! Who, oh who could it be!?
Well, it could possibly be one of the cardboard cutouts whose every line of description and dialogue marks them out as a villanous bad guy wrong'un of a villain. (The turns out to be mixed up in criminality? I'm SHOCKED, truly shocked!) But just in case you didn't guess it immediately, our author drops a medium hint, then a big hint, then on page 402 such a massively, awkwardly, obviously crowbarred-in hint that I literally physically cringed and groaned in vicarious embarrasment for him. By the time this mystery is finally "revealed" some 40 pages later the apathy could hardly be more total.
It's not just the reader who is (assumed to be) too dense to connect the blatantly spelt-out. On page 111 a character spends almost a whole page explaining to Roy Grace in detail that a certain Mr Daly was involved with Irish gangs in the 1920s. (I'm not marking this as a spoiler, because it's learnt-in-chapter-one stuff.) But by page 113 our dullard hero Roy Grace has apparently forgotten this lengthy history lesson, as he ponders a row of books about Irish gangs, and thinks to himself 'Daly, by golly, that's an Irish name..!', and resolves to google the name, to see if there could possibly be a gang connection. Did this book have an editor?
Speaking of google, at one point he searches a completely common Anglosphere name and gets "over twenty hits". Seriously? Try and find any common English name that gets less than twenty thousand. Because as if the crushingly stilted sentence construction, or risibly sub-childrens-book level of characterisation aren't jarring and distracting enough, we'd better throw in some technological nonsenses to completely disrupt any tiny sense of immersion that this disaster of a book might, despite itself, have managed to generate.
Oh, and there is also the string of facepalmingly ridiculous and unbelievable but oh-so-convenient-for-the-author coincidences and connections to help destroy suspension of disbelief, too. (I thought the bit where was pretty bad, but it was outdone by the bit about , which was so mind-bogglingly stupid and awful I had another physical flinch and groan of embarrassment.)
In fact, I think if I were to try and sum up this (absurdly long) review in a nutshell, that would be it. I simply couldn't get "into" this book, because not a paragraph passes without being reminded I am reading, and reading something bad. At no point could I sink into the world of the book, my brain tuning out the I'm-processing-words-on-page process of reading, tuning out the inherent knowledge of its artifice, suspending its disbelief and going with the flow of the world the author and his language created.
Whether it was being completely unsurprised by the "reveal" of something telegraphed in flaming 18 foot high letters umpteen of the (three-page-long) chapters ago, or being completely surprised that he'd managed to produce yet another sentence even more Partridge-ly ungainly than I'd ever thought possible even two pages ago, yet alone before I picked up this waste of trees, or rolling my eyes at another paper-thin cliche piece of characterisation or laughably not-credible coincidence.... every page rattled and jarred me with some fresh new reminder that this was one of the worst books I'd ever read.
Still not as bad as the Alchemist, mind you.
August 2, 2021
"Het verhaal is soms iets moeilijker te volgen gezien er zoveel personen belang stellen in het oude zakhorloge. Wie er spreekt en wie wat gedaan heeft, is soms wat onduidelijk." https://elinevandm.wordpress.com/2021...
July 2, 2013
, Peter James and Roy Grace, where do I begin? I have read all of the books in this series and am normally gripped by each and every book I read. When I read the synopsis for this one I really wasn’t sure. I was (as usual) to be proved wrong. This latest Roy Grace novel starts out with a vicious robbery at a Brighton Mansion and millions of pounds worth of antiques taken. It also leaves an elderly woman, Aileen McWhirter, fighting for her life. Roy Grace and his team lead the enquiry when the woman dies from her injuries and her brother Gavin Daly gets involved.
There is one item that is absolutely invaluable to Gavin, and although he is now well into his nineties he is still a force to be reckoned with. The invaluable item is a specific watch and the story, believe it or not, all revolves around the watch. I’m not one for major spoilers so will go no further with the storyline or plot.
What I will say is that Peter James is an awesome writer, however, there is one thing that is driving me insane. If, like me, you follow the series there has been an element to each book regarding Roy’s first wife Sandy who has been missing for over 10 years. This is the thing that is the cause of my angst. I really think the storyline concerning her needs to be dealt with and then finished, or dropped altogether. I feel like it has gone on for far too long and to the point where it’s lessening my enjoyment of the book. This particular book tells the story of Roy Grace and his team now, and the past concerning Gavin Daly and his family which forms part of New York’s gangs in the 1920’s. This alone, was done with skill and the story had me gripped from start to finish. However, every time Sandy get’s mentioned I feel like hurling my book into a wall.
Okay, I know some of you may think that’s extreme but when you have read a certain storyline for years (8 years in the case of the Roy Grace novels) certain elements are key. Sandy is now NOT key in my opinion, and the more I hear about it the more it grates on me. Do I want answers, yes! Do I want snippets each year, No! Deal with it and let’s move on?!?
Anyway, that aside this is actually a brilliant story and as usual Peter James shows off his skill with style. I think the majority of fans will love this book and newcomers should definitely read from the beginning of the series (although not an absolute necessity). Once again, we wait another year to see what is next on the agenda for Roy and his family and friends.
There is one item that is absolutely invaluable to Gavin, and although he is now well into his nineties he is still a force to be reckoned with. The invaluable item is a specific watch and the story, believe it or not, all revolves around the watch. I’m not one for major spoilers so will go no further with the storyline or plot.
What I will say is that Peter James is an awesome writer, however, there is one thing that is driving me insane. If, like me, you follow the series there has been an element to each book regarding Roy’s first wife Sandy who has been missing for over 10 years. This is the thing that is the cause of my angst. I really think the storyline concerning her needs to be dealt with and then finished, or dropped altogether. I feel like it has gone on for far too long and to the point where it’s lessening my enjoyment of the book. This particular book tells the story of Roy Grace and his team now, and the past concerning Gavin Daly and his family which forms part of New York’s gangs in the 1920’s. This alone, was done with skill and the story had me gripped from start to finish. However, every time Sandy get’s mentioned I feel like hurling my book into a wall.
Okay, I know some of you may think that’s extreme but when you have read a certain storyline for years (8 years in the case of the Roy Grace novels) certain elements are key. Sandy is now NOT key in my opinion, and the more I hear about it the more it grates on me. Do I want answers, yes! Do I want snippets each year, No! Deal with it and let’s move on?!?
Anyway, that aside this is actually a brilliant story and as usual Peter James shows off his skill with style. I think the majority of fans will love this book and newcomers should definitely read from the beginning of the series (although not an absolute necessity). Once again, we wait another year to see what is next on the agenda for Roy and his family and friends.
August 26, 2014
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 14, 2017
In number 9 in the Roy Grace series, Peter James does it again. This is such an enjoyable series.......easy to read, complex but (mostly) believable plots, and good character development. This time we travel back in time to an incident in 1922 NYC that will play the major part in the present day case that DS Roy Grace and his team are investigating. A wealthy aged woman is killed and her valuable art collection is stolen. Among the missing items is a rare vintage watch that belonged to her father who was murdered in 1922 and you now know where the first two chapters were leading.......there is an ancient score to settle and a promise to keep. Lots of twists and turns make for another winner in the series.
February 14, 2021
Even for a police procedural this one dragged on quite a bit for me. The villains were written as very clichéd caricatures which made for a quite blasé plot. Things didn't pick up in this story until the last ten chapters (out of 126 chapters). Please Oh please cut the Sandy subplot out it is just an annoying drag on the story. If this series is indeed going to be picked up by ITV in England please make the Sandy character more dynamically involved in haunting Grace or better yet just leave her as missing not ever appearing at all and declared legally dead.
April 25, 2023
4.5⭐
Įvykdomas žiaurus apiplėšimas, pavogtų antikvarinių daiktų vertė siekia 10mln svarų, o senutė šeimininkė nuo patirtų kankinimų miršta. Mirusiosios brolis nori atgauti tik vieną, neįkainojamą ir sentimentus keliantį laikrodį ir pasirengęs pats įvykdyti teisingumą.
Labai įdomus tyrimas ir, kai jau rodos viskas stojo į savo vietas, o bet, tačiau autorius pateikė nedidelę staigmeną paskutiniame skyriuje.
Įvykdomas žiaurus apiplėšimas, pavogtų antikvarinių daiktų vertė siekia 10mln svarų, o senutė šeimininkė nuo patirtų kankinimų miršta. Mirusiosios brolis nori atgauti tik vieną, neįkainojamą ir sentimentus keliantį laikrodį ir pasirengęs pats įvykdyti teisingumą.
Labai įdomus tyrimas ir, kai jau rodos viskas stojo į savo vietas, o bet, tačiau autorius pateikė nedidelę staigmeną paskutiniame skyriuje.
August 13, 2016
3.5/5 Peter James's latest book Dead Man's Time is the ninth entry in the Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series.
I had read the first four or five books in this series, but hadn't picked up one lately.
Dead Man's Time opens with a scene from 1922 - a scared young boy is witness to his mother's death and his father's disappearance in New York. The only thing left to him is his father's broken watch and a list of names and numbers. Fast forward to 2012 England. The boy is now ninety five. That same watch has been tucked away in his sister's safe for all those ensuing years until a brazen daytime robbery occurs. A robbery that seems to be more than just a grab for the valuable antiques and paintings in the home, for the existence of the watch is known to very few. The thieves aren't content with their looting - they also murder the old woman.
Roy's team is called in to investigate. James has created a solid, enjoyable police procedural. I always enjoy the team atmosphere of British crime solving and the piecing together of clues. Grace's team is ever changing, but some old standbys are still with him. James gives this supporting cast personality - they come across as real and believable.
Grace bases his storyline on actual historical events - the Irish gangs and politics of 1920's New York. I did find this quite interesting and hopped on to the internet to check out some of the details - notable The Dead Rabbit Gang. However, I did find parts of the plot a bit of a stretch. Grace's need to travel to New York seems unbelievable, as do his actions while there. The subplot involving a criminal from Grace's past seems overdone. And I found the thugs in England to be clichéd in both dialogue, descriptions and actions. As I mentioned, I haven't read the last three or so books, but one thing hasn't changed or been resolved . Grace's ex wife Sandy has been hanging in the background for long enough - hopefully this is the end of her and her storyline. James does include a good personal storyline with Grace's role as a new father.
Dead Man's Time was a solid read, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this series to those who enjoy British police procedurals. But it wasn't a standout for me.
I had read the first four or five books in this series, but hadn't picked up one lately.
Dead Man's Time opens with a scene from 1922 - a scared young boy is witness to his mother's death and his father's disappearance in New York. The only thing left to him is his father's broken watch and a list of names and numbers. Fast forward to 2012 England. The boy is now ninety five. That same watch has been tucked away in his sister's safe for all those ensuing years until a brazen daytime robbery occurs. A robbery that seems to be more than just a grab for the valuable antiques and paintings in the home, for the existence of the watch is known to very few. The thieves aren't content with their looting - they also murder the old woman.
Roy's team is called in to investigate. James has created a solid, enjoyable police procedural. I always enjoy the team atmosphere of British crime solving and the piecing together of clues. Grace's team is ever changing, but some old standbys are still with him. James gives this supporting cast personality - they come across as real and believable.
Grace bases his storyline on actual historical events - the Irish gangs and politics of 1920's New York. I did find this quite interesting and hopped on to the internet to check out some of the details - notable The Dead Rabbit Gang. However, I did find parts of the plot a bit of a stretch. Grace's need to travel to New York seems unbelievable, as do his actions while there. The subplot involving a criminal from Grace's past seems overdone. And I found the thugs in England to be clichéd in both dialogue, descriptions and actions. As I mentioned, I haven't read the last three or so books, but one thing hasn't changed or been resolved . Grace's ex wife Sandy has been hanging in the background for long enough - hopefully this is the end of her and her storyline. James does include a good personal storyline with Grace's role as a new father.
Dead Man's Time was a solid read, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this series to those who enjoy British police procedurals. But it wasn't a standout for me.
July 4, 2025
11 jaar geleden las ik deel 8, nu luisterde ik deel 9.
Dit heeft de tand des tijds echt heel slecht doorstaan, of misschien heb ik nu gewoon beter door dat dit echt heel matige boeken zijn.
Op naar deel 10 dus!
Dit heeft de tand des tijds echt heel slecht doorstaan, of misschien heb ik nu gewoon beter door dat dit echt heel matige boeken zijn.
Op naar deel 10 dus!
September 3, 2016
Over the past two weeks I have reacquainted myself with Roy Grace by reading books three to eight in those weeks. I hated myself for leaving it so long between book two and three but loved it because it meant I could read all the books without a years wait in between. I finished Not Dead Yet at 23.50 last night (June 5th), and started this book just after midnight on my Kindle. Needless to say nothing got done today while I devoured this book, and I think it could be his best yet. I am now just gutted that I have no more Grace books to read!
As always Peter James tells one hell of a story, starting in New York in 1922. As with his other books it wasn't hard to keep track of the stories between then and the present day nor was it hard to believe it, one of the best things about James' books are how believable and real they feel. I firmly believe he is one of the best writers in the UK, and certainly of the police procedural. Grace is also one of my favourite fictional detectives, maybe even my favourite now? It was Billingham's Tom Thorne until recently.
I also loved reading about Grace as a father and about how he would cope with, shall we call them 'things beyond his control'. The Sandy mystery in the last book was probably the best thing about it. There are also appearances from characters including Branson who I also really like and the fantastic Potting. I love the friendship between Grace and Branson. And I love the fact that despite how awful Potting is, there probably is people like him in the police all over the UK. Some crime authors rely on comedy and unbelievable plots too heavily I find but James manages to fit the comedy in between some fantastic writing, along with plenty of mystery and intrigue to keep you on your toes throughout the book.
Roll on the next book is all I can say as I am gutted to have reached the end of the book.
As always Peter James tells one hell of a story, starting in New York in 1922. As with his other books it wasn't hard to keep track of the stories between then and the present day nor was it hard to believe it, one of the best things about James' books are how believable and real they feel. I firmly believe he is one of the best writers in the UK, and certainly of the police procedural. Grace is also one of my favourite fictional detectives, maybe even my favourite now? It was Billingham's Tom Thorne until recently.
I also loved reading about Grace as a father and about how he would cope with, shall we call them 'things beyond his control'. The Sandy mystery in the last book was probably the best thing about it. There are also appearances from characters including Branson who I also really like and the fantastic Potting. I love the friendship between Grace and Branson. And I love the fact that despite how awful Potting is, there probably is people like him in the police all over the UK. Some crime authors rely on comedy and unbelievable plots too heavily I find but James manages to fit the comedy in between some fantastic writing, along with plenty of mystery and intrigue to keep you on your toes throughout the book.
Roll on the next book is all I can say as I am gutted to have reached the end of the book.
July 3, 2016
As always a very good read although I am getting a little tired of the 'Sarah' situation and would appreciate it if Mr James would conclude it sometime soon!
January 27, 2016
It was an easy read, not demanding, I worked out a lot of it early on. The author seemed to be obsessed with describing what each character wore! ( Yes, really! right down to the shoes they wore!) He described a woman has having a 'catwalk figure'! There was more about what the various character wore but not much about their personalities, apart from Gavin Day's story not really much about the backgrounds of the characters who all seemed to be either good or bad - no shades of grey here! There was also a rather bizarre thread concerning DS Grace's ex wife,possibly that will be expanded in a future novel. I think its the first novel I've read by this author, probably the last, I found it very two dimensional no depth whatsoever.
February 19, 2015
Dit is weer zo'n heerlijk boek van Peter James. Deel 9 in de Roy Grace serie. Zo als altijd heb ik er van genoten.
July 3, 2020
Very average Grace story about revenge, grudges and antiques. All very predictable and plods to an inevitable conclusion - series needs an injection of something different.
September 2, 2024
Roy Grace volume # 9
This story concerns the theft of valuable paintings and other antiques from a house of an elderly woman who died a short time later from the savage beating sustained during the robbery, Aileen McWhirter was 98 years old. Her younger brother Gavin is not only shocked and saddened by this tragedy but is particularly upset about the disappearance of a treasured watch. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace will head the enquiry and finds himself following a murderous race against the clock....and us in another very exciting saga.
The story opens in 1920’s New York when a boy’s mother is killed and the father kidnapped by hard looking men. Then the story quickly moves to Brighton present day with Grace investigating the home invasion. The story unfolds gradually with these two events on both sides of the Atlantic. Back and forth we go. I quite like the way the two different time periods come back together especially at the end. In tandem with the main story but not really a part of it is that someone is after Roy and his family and wants desperately to pull them apart even killed them. Grace nemesis, Amis Smallbone, definitely has a twisted obsession for revenge against our protagonist.
I love how Mr. James is able to takes ideas and make it seem real and believable such as the antiques trade and the psychology of revenge. The cast of characters is great I particularly loved Roy’s relationship with Cleo and their baby Noah which is very well-done in my books. Grace and his team of investigators also work superbly well together. They dig out clues and drive the investigation along while building tension for us to stay riveted till the very end, another plus. Of course the bad guys are interesting and their part give traction even more to this very exciting drama. Oh! Sandy as always has her usual snippet to tease us...what will she do?. Said with short chapters, this gripping tale is a masterful juggling act for the author as well as for Grace.
There is a lot I could mention going on here but I have to leave some for you to discover. This story is so smooth; I zipped through it in no time.
This story concerns the theft of valuable paintings and other antiques from a house of an elderly woman who died a short time later from the savage beating sustained during the robbery, Aileen McWhirter was 98 years old. Her younger brother Gavin is not only shocked and saddened by this tragedy but is particularly upset about the disappearance of a treasured watch. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace will head the enquiry and finds himself following a murderous race against the clock....and us in another very exciting saga.
The story opens in 1920’s New York when a boy’s mother is killed and the father kidnapped by hard looking men. Then the story quickly moves to Brighton present day with Grace investigating the home invasion. The story unfolds gradually with these two events on both sides of the Atlantic. Back and forth we go. I quite like the way the two different time periods come back together especially at the end. In tandem with the main story but not really a part of it is that someone is after Roy and his family and wants desperately to pull them apart even killed them. Grace nemesis, Amis Smallbone, definitely has a twisted obsession for revenge against our protagonist.
I love how Mr. James is able to takes ideas and make it seem real and believable such as the antiques trade and the psychology of revenge. The cast of characters is great I particularly loved Roy’s relationship with Cleo and their baby Noah which is very well-done in my books. Grace and his team of investigators also work superbly well together. They dig out clues and drive the investigation along while building tension for us to stay riveted till the very end, another plus. Of course the bad guys are interesting and their part give traction even more to this very exciting drama. Oh! Sandy as always has her usual snippet to tease us...what will she do?. Said with short chapters, this gripping tale is a masterful juggling act for the author as well as for Grace.
There is a lot I could mention going on here but I have to leave some for you to discover. This story is so smooth; I zipped through it in no time.
October 31, 2023
Every book in this series just keeps getting better , I can truly say I am addicted to this series!
The storyline has plenty of twists and turns right up until the very end, I can honestly say i never expected the ending! The story is very nicely done into bite sized chapters (meaning you'll keep reading just one more chapter!) But it also let's you keep seeing things from different people's perspectives to try work it out for yourself.
Even if you haven't read the rest of the series you can quickly catch up with what's happened in the past for Roy Grace and Cleo. The story has pretty much everything you could look for in a crime thriller... deaths, suspects, twists, romance, suspense, action.... just a perfect read again !
The storyline has plenty of twists and turns right up until the very end, I can honestly say i never expected the ending! The story is very nicely done into bite sized chapters (meaning you'll keep reading just one more chapter!) But it also let's you keep seeing things from different people's perspectives to try work it out for yourself.
Even if you haven't read the rest of the series you can quickly catch up with what's happened in the past for Roy Grace and Cleo. The story has pretty much everything you could look for in a crime thriller... deaths, suspects, twists, romance, suspense, action.... just a perfect read again !
January 29, 2018
Dit boek is beter dan het eerste boek van de serie. Het is een interessant verhaal en het plot zit goed in elkaar. Soms mist het verhaal wat spanning. Toch is het mysterie interessant genoeg om door te lezen. Ik heb de tussenliggende delen niet gelezen. Toch vond ik dat niet storend. Het boek is prima los te lezen. Ik ben wel nieuwsgierig naar de ontwikkelingen van Roy’s verdwenen vrouw. Hetgeen voor mij een reden zou zijn om een volgend deel ook te lezen. Nu dit boek mij beter is bevallen dan het eerste deel, ben ik toch wel genegen om meer boeken van deze schrijver te proberen. Dat ik dit boek een kans heb gegeven komt omdat ik het van mijn moeder geleend heb en zij het wel goed vond.
August 17, 2022
For someone who is not into antiques with this story heavily focusing on them. I loved it. Fast paced, thrilling, keeps you guessing and potentially heartbreaking for Grace and his family. Heartbreaking for Glenn and Norman in parts too. I like how they became even more into the story. The Sandy developments are so interesting in each book. She gets darker and more interesting each one so I want it to keep coming. I want them to meet again and see what happens. She is a thrilling mystery in herself.
October 7, 2023
Thought-provoking, saddening, and exciting story of USA birth and its best and worst. Loving this author’s work more with each book. The narrator is always clear and well performed. Clean (scarce profanity—it’s war).
March 27, 2024
Puiki Rojaus Greiso serija, nors mano vis skaitoma ne iš eilės, bet vistiek, pagrindinio veikėjo stiprybė, protas, ir atkaklumas mane žavi. Šią knygą vertinčiau 3,5 atrodo istorija gera, detektyvas geras, bet trūko. Veiksmas toks vietomis nelogiškas, mažai intrigos, arba neatskleista iki galo, atrodo perskaičiau, ir iškilo daugiau klausimų, nei atsakymų.
June 18, 2013
Right, time for a startling confession. I have to date only read one Peter James book- shame on me. So when I was approached to read and review Dead Man’s Time I was looking forward to the opportunity of re-entering D.I. Roy Grace’s world albeit with a seven book hiatus. In a way this has worked in my favour as I cannot have been said to be influenced by the other books, nor can this give me cause to compare this one to its predecessors in terms of style and character development, so it was really quite nice to read this in a vacuum unhindered, as I sometimes am, by the weight of those books in a series that have gone before!
I think was an interesting authorial experiment on the behalf of James as the action in the book pivots between the UK, Spain and America to accommodate the needs of the plot. The book opens in 1920‘s New York, as a young boy’s mother is killed and his father is spirited away by some ne’er-do-wells, immediately piquing my interest, but we are quickly settled back into present day Brighton, with Grace investigating a particularly heinous home invasion and the murder of its elderly occupant. It gradually unfolds that these two events either side of the Atlantic are related, and as the dead woman’s brother, nonagenarian Gavin Daly- a man with his own shady past- seeks his personal revenge on those responsible, Grace becomes embroiled in a tale of greed and murder that inevitably comes a little too close to his own doorstep. I don’t know if it’s just a personal foible on my part, but I did feel that as a reader I had the uncomfortable sensation of treading water a little, during certain parts of the UK based part of the book. There seemed to be a quite laborious journey to who was behind the whole robbery and why, and how by some dubious coincidences Grace’s nearest and dearest come to be threatened, along with a swift trip to Marbella by Daly’s odious son Lucas, and oafish hard man sidekick, to deal with some miscreants and a random diversion to Germany for Grace’s ex-partner Sandy to vent at her therapist. But, fear not, the book increases in excitement one hundred fold when Gavin Daly plus odious son Lucas, the ineffable Roy Grace and a couple of his colleagues all hotfoot it to America for the final denouement. I loved this section of the book, bemoaning the fact that it couldn’t be longer, and loved the interplay between Grace and his American counterparts, the depiction of New York and its environs, and the brilliant Gavin Daly wreaking his revenge for the sins of the past. Excellent, but a long time in coming and rudely interrupted by Grace’s irritating other half, Cleo- despite being showered by police protection after a storm in a teacup incident- making him come home. No. Let him stay a bit longer to hang out with the cool cops!
As the previous paragraph shows I did have issues with some of the supporting cast, but I do like Roy Grace- he’s so thoroughly decent and upstanding which proved a nice counterpoint to my personal preference of the more maverick and tortured souls who reside in law enforcement. I like his personal mantra that “he would never stop fighting his corner for the murder victims. He would work around the clock night and day to catch and lock up the perpetrators. And mostly, so far in his career, he had succeeded.” A good cop with a prodigious sense of right and wrong, ingrained with a wry humour and a natural empathy to those around him. I found the focus on his tedious home life a little too intrusive and disempowering throughout, but thought his character really came to the fore when involved in the cut and thrust of the investigation, and when interacting with suspects and colleagues.
The other standout character for me was the wily Gavin Daly, a man defined by his father’s disappearance in the era of Irish gangs in New York (the history of which was seamlessly woven into the central plot), and his lifelong ambition to find the truth behind his father’s disappearance and his final resting place. I thought this back story and the characterisation of Gavin himself gave some real backbone to the overall narrative arc, and his steely determination made him an admirable adversary not only for those who had sinned against him but in his cat and mouse relationship with Grace.
So despite a couple of quibbles, overall I quite enjoyed my return to the world of Peter James with Dead Man’s Time. I felt quite at home in the company of Roy Grace- our thoroughly decent detective- and thankfully the American aspects of the book, both in the terms of gang history and the relocation of the action to New York- lifted this from, for me personally, a slightly average read, to a slightly more exciting one. Not bad not brilliant.
I think was an interesting authorial experiment on the behalf of James as the action in the book pivots between the UK, Spain and America to accommodate the needs of the plot. The book opens in 1920‘s New York, as a young boy’s mother is killed and his father is spirited away by some ne’er-do-wells, immediately piquing my interest, but we are quickly settled back into present day Brighton, with Grace investigating a particularly heinous home invasion and the murder of its elderly occupant. It gradually unfolds that these two events either side of the Atlantic are related, and as the dead woman’s brother, nonagenarian Gavin Daly- a man with his own shady past- seeks his personal revenge on those responsible, Grace becomes embroiled in a tale of greed and murder that inevitably comes a little too close to his own doorstep. I don’t know if it’s just a personal foible on my part, but I did feel that as a reader I had the uncomfortable sensation of treading water a little, during certain parts of the UK based part of the book. There seemed to be a quite laborious journey to who was behind the whole robbery and why, and how by some dubious coincidences Grace’s nearest and dearest come to be threatened, along with a swift trip to Marbella by Daly’s odious son Lucas, and oafish hard man sidekick, to deal with some miscreants and a random diversion to Germany for Grace’s ex-partner Sandy to vent at her therapist. But, fear not, the book increases in excitement one hundred fold when Gavin Daly plus odious son Lucas, the ineffable Roy Grace and a couple of his colleagues all hotfoot it to America for the final denouement. I loved this section of the book, bemoaning the fact that it couldn’t be longer, and loved the interplay between Grace and his American counterparts, the depiction of New York and its environs, and the brilliant Gavin Daly wreaking his revenge for the sins of the past. Excellent, but a long time in coming and rudely interrupted by Grace’s irritating other half, Cleo- despite being showered by police protection after a storm in a teacup incident- making him come home. No. Let him stay a bit longer to hang out with the cool cops!
As the previous paragraph shows I did have issues with some of the supporting cast, but I do like Roy Grace- he’s so thoroughly decent and upstanding which proved a nice counterpoint to my personal preference of the more maverick and tortured souls who reside in law enforcement. I like his personal mantra that “he would never stop fighting his corner for the murder victims. He would work around the clock night and day to catch and lock up the perpetrators. And mostly, so far in his career, he had succeeded.” A good cop with a prodigious sense of right and wrong, ingrained with a wry humour and a natural empathy to those around him. I found the focus on his tedious home life a little too intrusive and disempowering throughout, but thought his character really came to the fore when involved in the cut and thrust of the investigation, and when interacting with suspects and colleagues.
The other standout character for me was the wily Gavin Daly, a man defined by his father’s disappearance in the era of Irish gangs in New York (the history of which was seamlessly woven into the central plot), and his lifelong ambition to find the truth behind his father’s disappearance and his final resting place. I thought this back story and the characterisation of Gavin himself gave some real backbone to the overall narrative arc, and his steely determination made him an admirable adversary not only for those who had sinned against him but in his cat and mouse relationship with Grace.
So despite a couple of quibbles, overall I quite enjoyed my return to the world of Peter James with Dead Man’s Time. I felt quite at home in the company of Roy Grace- our thoroughly decent detective- and thankfully the American aspects of the book, both in the terms of gang history and the relocation of the action to New York- lifted this from, for me personally, a slightly average read, to a slightly more exciting one. Not bad not brilliant.
March 6, 2025
I really enjoyed this overall. It was an interesting case and the side characters were compelling.
My only gripe is Cleo.
I haven't been this irritated by a fictional character in a long time. She has been shoehorned in since the first book. Peter James has tried very hard to convince us that she is this wonderful, sexy perfect woman and I just can't get on board.
She spends most of the book whining.. even though she is oh so understanding in a way that Sandy never was. In this book, we find out that she calls her parents Mummy and Daddy; maybe not a huge deal, but it didn't make her endearing in the way that the author hoped.
3.5 stars, mostly because of the overfocus on Cleo.
My only gripe is Cleo.
I haven't been this irritated by a fictional character in a long time. She has been shoehorned in since the first book. Peter James has tried very hard to convince us that she is this wonderful, sexy perfect woman and I just can't get on board.
She spends most of the book whining.. even though she is oh so understanding in a way that Sandy never was. In this book, we find out that she calls her parents Mummy and Daddy; maybe not a huge deal, but it didn't make her endearing in the way that the author hoped.
3.5 stars, mostly because of the overfocus on Cleo.
November 30, 2025
Niekada nenuviliantis Rėjus Greisas. Ir dvi moterys - Klėja ir Sendė. Kiekvienoje knygoje pateikiama vis daugiau informacijos apie prieš dešimt metų dingusią Rėjaus žmoną Sendę ir kuo toliau, tuo ji man vis labiau atstumianti: veidmainė, melagė, egoistė, be galo kerštinga.
Įdomi pati istorija, kuri nukelia į Niujorko uosto rajono gaujų karus.
Yra vienas bet... Na kaip taip galima nepagarbiai elgtis su skaitytoju. Net neminint gramatinių klaidų, kurių knygoje apstu. Kai kurie žodžiai taip iškraipyti, kad juos gali suprasti tik iš konteksto. Rojaus sūnus Nojus vietomis virsta Luku. Išties koks gi skirtumas, skaitytojas pats atsirinks. Liūdna, labai liūdna.
Įdomi pati istorija, kuri nukelia į Niujorko uosto rajono gaujų karus.
Yra vienas bet... Na kaip taip galima nepagarbiai elgtis su skaitytoju. Net neminint gramatinių klaidų, kurių knygoje apstu. Kai kurie žodžiai taip iškraipyti, kad juos gali suprasti tik iš konteksto. Rojaus sūnus Nojus vietomis virsta Luku. Išties koks gi skirtumas, skaitytojas pats atsirinks. Liūdna, labai liūdna.
May 6, 2024
Een hoop personages wat het soms lastig maakt om te volgen. Een minpuntje is dat de rijd op de cover niet klopt. Pluspuntje voor de epiloog. Afgerond net 4 sterren.
May 14, 2019
Dead Man’s Time is another installment in James’ Roy Grace series in which we follow the Brighton-based detective as he investigates a crime spanning 90 years. It all goes back to a murder that took place in New York City in 1922, and I quite liked the way that the two different time periods came back together, especially towards the end. It was kind of anticlimactic in a way, but it was also the only real ending that could have happened.
It’s also interesting how the bad guys in this book aren’t actually all that bad, although they do their fair share of bad things. If anything, the main bad guy in this is the one who had it in for Roy Grace and who was out to get him and his family, a story line that took place in tandem with the main story but which wasn’t necessarily a part of it.
The main story, though, basically follows what appears to be a burglary gone wrong in which an old woman is tortured until she’s on the brink of death. They also take all of her art, her antiques and her valuables, leaving Roy Grace stuck trying to track it down in a race across time across Brighton and, later on, elsewhere in the world.
I don’t think that this is Peter James’ best book, but then I’ve read quite a few of them by now and you’re always going to find some books that are better than others in any series. It’s still worth reading though, and while you don’t need to read them all in order if you don’t want to, you will get a little bit more from the story if you do. Not from the crime at the centre of it perhaps, but certainly from the back story. When I read it, there were characters there that I knew would be dead or in jail a few books down the line.
What I will say is that even though I’ve read over a dozen of James’ books (including two 500+ page books in the last couple of weeks), I’m still enjoying them, and I’m probably going to pick up another 600-pager next weekend as I’ll be spending a lot of time travelling. James’ writing is sleek and easy to absorb, and at the same time it’s not intimidating. I don’t read his books and wonder how anyone could have ever written them. I just read them and enjoy them and then look forward to the next one.
So would I recommend this? Of course I would, but I would suggest reading through them in order if you can just so that you don’t spoil yourself for some of the storylines that come in alongside the mysteries. And it was cool that James included references to charities and other organisations that support some of the issues raised.
It’s also interesting how the bad guys in this book aren’t actually all that bad, although they do their fair share of bad things. If anything, the main bad guy in this is the one who had it in for Roy Grace and who was out to get him and his family, a story line that took place in tandem with the main story but which wasn’t necessarily a part of it.
The main story, though, basically follows what appears to be a burglary gone wrong in which an old woman is tortured until she’s on the brink of death. They also take all of her art, her antiques and her valuables, leaving Roy Grace stuck trying to track it down in a race across time across Brighton and, later on, elsewhere in the world.
I don’t think that this is Peter James’ best book, but then I’ve read quite a few of them by now and you’re always going to find some books that are better than others in any series. It’s still worth reading though, and while you don’t need to read them all in order if you don’t want to, you will get a little bit more from the story if you do. Not from the crime at the centre of it perhaps, but certainly from the back story. When I read it, there were characters there that I knew would be dead or in jail a few books down the line.
What I will say is that even though I’ve read over a dozen of James’ books (including two 500+ page books in the last couple of weeks), I’m still enjoying them, and I’m probably going to pick up another 600-pager next weekend as I’ll be spending a lot of time travelling. James’ writing is sleek and easy to absorb, and at the same time it’s not intimidating. I don’t read his books and wonder how anyone could have ever written them. I just read them and enjoy them and then look forward to the next one.
So would I recommend this? Of course I would, but I would suggest reading through them in order if you can just so that you don’t spoil yourself for some of the storylines that come in alongside the mysteries. And it was cool that James included references to charities and other organisations that support some of the issues raised.
January 10, 2015
Dead Man's Time, by Peter James, is a story of crime and retribution, promises kept and promises broken, victims and perpetrators, guilt and innocence.
The story revolves around a pocket watch that once beloned to Gavin Daly's father. When Gavin was five, his mother was murdered and his father was abducted by rivals in the Irish mob. As Gavin, his older sister, and his aunt are boarding the ship that will remove them from this violent city to be raised in their Irish homeland, a mysterious stranger hands Gavin the watch, along with a cryptic clue, and disappears in the crowd. Neither Gavin's aunt or the port officials are interested in tracking down the stranger, but the five-year-old resolves to someday come back and find his father.
Ninety years later, Gavin's sister is killed and her house is stripped of its many valuable antiques. The watch is among the missing. It is the only item Gavin cares about getting back and he is not concerned about staying inside the law to effect its return. Gavin must have the watch, and finally decipher the clue, to keep his childhood promise.
Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, of course, does have to stay inside the law as he attempts to find the watch and other missing valuables, and solve the murder of Gavin's sister and other deaths that seem to be following in the watch's wake. Grace must follow a twisting tangle of relationships through decades and continents to close this case.
As I was reading, it seemed to me that everyone in this book was cruel. Sure, the "bad guys" were bad, but the victim's family was worse than dysfunctional and even the relationships in Grace's private life were riddled with cruelty and betrayal. And yet the book had, well not actually a "happy ending", but at least a satisfactory resolution. So if there was a point to be made, it wasn't made very gracefully.
Dead Man's Time is the 9th Roy Grace book by Peter James but it is the first I've read. I'm sure the story suffered by my coming in in the middle of the series. I may read another if the description catches my interest or if someone I trust recommends one to me or if I have a limited choice in an airport shop, but I probably won't search one out.
The story revolves around a pocket watch that once beloned to Gavin Daly's father. When Gavin was five, his mother was murdered and his father was abducted by rivals in the Irish mob. As Gavin, his older sister, and his aunt are boarding the ship that will remove them from this violent city to be raised in their Irish homeland, a mysterious stranger hands Gavin the watch, along with a cryptic clue, and disappears in the crowd. Neither Gavin's aunt or the port officials are interested in tracking down the stranger, but the five-year-old resolves to someday come back and find his father.
Ninety years later, Gavin's sister is killed and her house is stripped of its many valuable antiques. The watch is among the missing. It is the only item Gavin cares about getting back and he is not concerned about staying inside the law to effect its return. Gavin must have the watch, and finally decipher the clue, to keep his childhood promise.
Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, of course, does have to stay inside the law as he attempts to find the watch and other missing valuables, and solve the murder of Gavin's sister and other deaths that seem to be following in the watch's wake. Grace must follow a twisting tangle of relationships through decades and continents to close this case.
As I was reading, it seemed to me that everyone in this book was cruel. Sure, the "bad guys" were bad, but the victim's family was worse than dysfunctional and even the relationships in Grace's private life were riddled with cruelty and betrayal. And yet the book had, well not actually a "happy ending", but at least a satisfactory resolution. So if there was a point to be made, it wasn't made very gracefully.
Dead Man's Time is the 9th Roy Grace book by Peter James but it is the first I've read. I'm sure the story suffered by my coming in in the middle of the series. I may read another if the description catches my interest or if someone I trust recommends one to me or if I have a limited choice in an airport shop, but I probably won't search one out.
November 18, 2013
3 1/2 stars
Maybe one for the fans of the series.
I didn’t realise when I picked up this novel that is the 9th book in the Roy Grace series and for the most part I was happily able to progress through the book without any regrets or too much missing background aside from missing the nuances of the sub plot relating to Sandy, which actually wasn’t very well developed, it didn’t add much to the story and largely I wondered why this section was even included. I ploughed merrily through this book noting how well the author weaves the memories of the past with the current world of the main characters.
This is a well written, incident based, police procedural that climaxes in an explosion of retribution. The narrative has an authentic voice and is an interesting and well constructed read but for me lacked strong believable characters (aside from Gavin Daly who I thought was well written). I found Cleo whinny. I found Roy Grace too concerned with being a politically correct parent/police officer and a little one dimensional whilst he was at it. The intrusion of loose references to a certain contemporary book on erotica added nothing to the story and added no depth to the characters. Stereo types abounded.
However, if you are looking for a well plotted police procedural this book is for you (and maybe if you have read the others in the series you might find a connection that I didn’t) and for me that was the books downfall – I didn’t connect with the characters. I didn’t want to see the baby harmed but aside from that I didn’t really care about any of characters. And I wasn’t gripped by the narrative; I happily could put the book down for a day or two and then pick it up again. And I found a flaw in the plot – a minor one but distracting all the same (I won’t reveal the problem but will say it is about identities).
Maybe one for the fans of the series.
I didn’t realise when I picked up this novel that is the 9th book in the Roy Grace series and for the most part I was happily able to progress through the book without any regrets or too much missing background aside from missing the nuances of the sub plot relating to Sandy, which actually wasn’t very well developed, it didn’t add much to the story and largely I wondered why this section was even included. I ploughed merrily through this book noting how well the author weaves the memories of the past with the current world of the main characters.
This is a well written, incident based, police procedural that climaxes in an explosion of retribution. The narrative has an authentic voice and is an interesting and well constructed read but for me lacked strong believable characters (aside from Gavin Daly who I thought was well written). I found Cleo whinny. I found Roy Grace too concerned with being a politically correct parent/police officer and a little one dimensional whilst he was at it. The intrusion of loose references to a certain contemporary book on erotica added nothing to the story and added no depth to the characters. Stereo types abounded.
However, if you are looking for a well plotted police procedural this book is for you (and maybe if you have read the others in the series you might find a connection that I didn’t) and for me that was the books downfall – I didn’t connect with the characters. I didn’t want to see the baby harmed but aside from that I didn’t really care about any of characters. And I wasn’t gripped by the narrative; I happily could put the book down for a day or two and then pick it up again. And I found a flaw in the plot – a minor one but distracting all the same (I won’t reveal the problem but will say it is about identities).
March 10, 2015
Dit was het eerste boek wat ik las van Peter James.
Doodsklok is het negende deel uit de Roy Grace-serie, maar ik heb dat aan niets kunnen merken.
De auteur heeft geen oude koeien uit de sloot hoeven halen om ons een prettig leesbaar verhaal aan te bieden. Hoognodige informatie wordt op een prettige manier verwerkt zonder storend te zijn.
De hoofdpersoon, Roy Grace is een mens van vlees en bloed geworden. Een aardig mens zelfs.
Een kundige rechercheur, die zijn uiterste best doet om de zaak op te lossen samen met zijn collega's. En die tussen alle gebeurtenissen door zijn vrouw en pasgeboren kind zijn aandacht wil geven.
Ook de andere personages zijn heel geloofwaardig neergezet.
Een van de personages heeft 'wraak nemen' tot zijn levenswerk gemaakt. Er spreekt zoveel haat uit hetgeen hij denkt en onderneemt, dat je er koud van wordt.
Een ander personage wordt om duidelijke redenen 'Apologist' genoemd.
Het verhaal heeft een geweldig goed einde! Dit was totaal onverwacht. Heel knap gedaan!
Wat ik eerder niet wist;
'Een deel van de reden waarom rechters in Groot-Brittanië pruiken droegen, was als vermomming, zodat ze later niet zouden worden herkend door mensen die ze hadden veroordeeld.'
In dit verhaal kom je als lezer zoveel tegen: spanning, mysterie, hebzucht, teleurstelling en haat. Maar ook verwachting, vriendschap, liefde en humor zijn volop aanwezig.
Een heerlijk boek vol afwisseling, zowel in tijd als in emoties.
Ik heb dit boek van Peter James graag gelezen en waardeer het met 4/5 sterren. Een aanrader!
Doodsklok is het negende deel uit de Roy Grace-serie, maar ik heb dat aan niets kunnen merken.
De auteur heeft geen oude koeien uit de sloot hoeven halen om ons een prettig leesbaar verhaal aan te bieden. Hoognodige informatie wordt op een prettige manier verwerkt zonder storend te zijn.
De hoofdpersoon, Roy Grace is een mens van vlees en bloed geworden. Een aardig mens zelfs.
Een kundige rechercheur, die zijn uiterste best doet om de zaak op te lossen samen met zijn collega's. En die tussen alle gebeurtenissen door zijn vrouw en pasgeboren kind zijn aandacht wil geven.
Ook de andere personages zijn heel geloofwaardig neergezet.
Een van de personages heeft 'wraak nemen' tot zijn levenswerk gemaakt. Er spreekt zoveel haat uit hetgeen hij denkt en onderneemt, dat je er koud van wordt.
Een ander personage wordt om duidelijke redenen 'Apologist' genoemd.
Het verhaal heeft een geweldig goed einde! Dit was totaal onverwacht. Heel knap gedaan!
Wat ik eerder niet wist;
'Een deel van de reden waarom rechters in Groot-Brittanië pruiken droegen, was als vermomming, zodat ze later niet zouden worden herkend door mensen die ze hadden veroordeeld.'
In dit verhaal kom je als lezer zoveel tegen: spanning, mysterie, hebzucht, teleurstelling en haat. Maar ook verwachting, vriendschap, liefde en humor zijn volop aanwezig.
Een heerlijk boek vol afwisseling, zowel in tijd als in emoties.
Ik heb dit boek van Peter James graag gelezen en waardeer het met 4/5 sterren. Een aanrader!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 555 reviews