The Night Market by Jonathan Moore

The Night Market by Jonathan Moore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Detective Ross Carver and his partner are on duty on what seems to be any other Thursday night when the get the call that there has been a homicide. Arriving at the scene in a luxurious home things don’t seem to be quite right that night but Ross and his partner go about securing the scene. Just as they’ve about cleared the home and gone in to inspect the body a group of men enter the premises dressed in hazard gear and yank Ross and his partner out into a decontamination trailer.

On Sunday Ross awakens in his apartment with his neighbor, Mia, watching over him. Ross has no memory of the what had happened to land him in his neighbors care but she tells him he was brought in by what looked like other officers and told he’d been poisoned. Ross only has memories from the Wednesday before and needs to find out just what happened to him the last four days and how he ended up back at his place unconscious.

First, The Night Market by Jonathon Moore seems to be loosely tied to two of his previous books, The Poison Artist and The Dark Room. I did not realize this when picking this one up or I might have passed this one by myself. I’m not sure how much of the story has been built in the other two reads or even how connected that they are but all throughout this book I was finding myself wondering just what was missing but perhaps that may be the answer.

This story while not a bad one overall still seemed to me to be a bit disjointed at times as if things were just tossed in here and there on a whim. It starts off a bit as a police procedural then moves onto science fiction the perhaps a drama with a mystery and even a bit of romance all the while changing from each genre here and there throughout the book. Normally combined genres draw me in and don’t want to let go but with this one I struggled with how they fit quite often although there were still moments of being completely engaged. All in all a rather odd experience to say the least. When finished with this one I still struggled a bit with my thoughts since there were times it really shined and had some interesting ideas in the story but overall I think it’s one that ended as a just OK read for me and unfortunately will be a bit forgettable when said and done.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.