The Helper by David Jackson

Gut Instinct Rating - 5

Story Line - 5

Writing Style - 4.5

Characters - 5

Excitement Factor - 4.5

Believability for type and topics - 4

Similarity to other books - 4

Cover art - 4

Title Relevance - 5

Goodreads users gave this book a 4.22. I think it was more deserving of a 4.56.

Emoji Meter: 😱 🤐 🤔

---

Published in 2012.

Pages: 352.

Number of books by author: 5.

Genre: Crime Fiction.

Holy hell was this book something! From the get-go, I was a little skeptical about the book's length and the story itself. But, about half-way through, I knew this was going to be worth 5 stars. The characters were really well done. Each character had a specific personality that you could see right through. It was kind like, "what you see is what you get." Which was a nice change of pace from other crime books where everyone seems to have the exact same personality. Doyle, the main character, kind of reminded me of Danny Reagan from Blue Bloods. (Which I recommend, by the way.) He was tough, but sensitive; he broke the rules, but enforced them; he got what he wanted, but he gave up a lot, too. His character was really intriguing. I haven't read anything of the other books in the series, but I would hope that these character traits carried over, not just being relevant in book two. The remaining characters could've been acting the scenes out right in front of me. It almost felt like I was reading a script for a movie or TV

It almost felt like I was reading a script for a movie or TV series with all the depth to the characters. They made the story, paired with the author's writing style, of course, believable. I think some things were a bit far fetched, but I don't work on crime scenes or in the morgue, so maybe everything was actually dead on (no pun intended). The writing style brought out a lot of the believability because it all sounded real. Sometimes in crime novels, we hear things and we think, "that statistic is way off," or "that's not actually how things work on the streets." But this book felt really real. I didn't feel as if I was losing touch with reality in any way. I did have a little struggle with the voice between The Helper and Doyle at the points of cross over. In some places, I couldn't even tell they were different people until after I had already read the remainder of the chapter. I would've liked a bit more distinction between The Helper and Doyle during these moments, but otherwise, the writing style was strong. And it was certainly exciting. The beginning was a little rough, and there towards the end, the book easily could've ended around 275 pages, but it kept going, so there was a little bump in the road there. The story itself became too long once the crimes were being solved. There's things I would've liked to have been resolved so we could've had closure, which for me, would've been exciting since everything was so secretive. The title was perfect. It's actually what drew me to the book in the first place. The artwork I'm sure had some kind of significant meaning, but I wasn't really following. It would've been cool to see like, a map, or a Clue-like cover, place the murder weapon in each location, with each person, without of course giving too much away.