Bleeding Hearts

I had high expectations with this murder/mystery book, "Bleeding Hearts" by Ian Rankin, as it was marketed to me that he is like "an English Michael Connelly".  I love a good mystery book and Michael Connelly's writing and his stories are some of my favorites! 

But this was no Michael Connelly mystery.  

"Bleeding Hearts" was slow to start.  In the middle of chapter 4 (30 pages in) I found myself wondering if and when this story was going to get moving.  The plot line was muddied with purposeless confusion; character names that were too alike and too many characters offering little to the main character's development or to the already scrambling plot (book extras).

There was love, which is always appealing, and characters who struggle between the good and bad within themselves.  But there wasn't anything that kept the reader thinking, guessing, trying to puzzle it all out before the end (which of course in a good book would be a total surprise). 

There was a late-in-the-game charge of action that I had hoped would lead to an end with a bang and save my overall feeling about the story, but the ending was a total let down. It sputtered to a final close that mirrored its laborious beginning.  

Basically it just wasn't what I expected and hoped it would be.  Ian Rankin is a talented writer, and has awards to prove it, but I was disappointed in this piece.  

Mildly entertaining but ultimately disappointing.