Incinerator (Crusher)

by Niall Leonard

[inlibrisveritas]

So I know the blurb says that this is a sequel, but the paper I received said it was a companion novel as does the back of the book…so I read it without reading the first book. I can say that is not necessary to have read Crusher beforehand as I didn’t feel lost and everything is recapped for the most part without giving away too much of the previous story.

Incinerator follows Finn Maguire as he begins to make his life into something. He now has a gym of his own where his former boxing coach is his partner and closest friend. However things don’t stay positive for long as a loan shark starts to lay pressure on Delroy and Finn, and his lawyer goes missing with all of his money. Overall the story had the makings of a great thriller, but fell a little short of that mark. The plot is fairly fast pace and aided with the rather large font size I zipped through this in about 5 hours. The mystery wasn’t too hard to figure out but the plot threw in some interesting twists that made the process fairly enjoyable.

Finn had me a bit confused because I didn’t really know what to feel about him. He’s definitely efficient and it’s always nice to have a main character who can handle himself in a sticky situation…but I don’t really feel like I know him. He likes fighting, he has an interest in Nicky, and…I don’t know. His personality didn’t shine through and being that this is a first person novel I was really disappointed that the voice of the character was slightly generic. I was impressed with his ability to get to the bottom of things but I was more surprised that he was only arrested like twice…seriously….

Overall it’s a pretty decent mystery/thriller and it’s certainly a very quick read, however I’m not sure I’ll check out the companion novel.