Customer Reviews
More brilliance from Jardine - By: , 09 Jan 2006 
I found Quintin Jardine by accident - his book wasin a set of 10in a well-known book shop. As I hadn't read any of the authorsin the box-set I bought it hoping to expand my bookcase, & am damm glad I did. Jardine is a brilliant writer (I'm not going to compare him to Rankin as I haven't read any Rankin, & to compare him to someone else would be to miss the point of how good Jardine is), & is the kind of book you can pick up & read cover to cover without having to decipher any police jargon, or wonder 'who that was' & 'what was their pointin all this?' As this was the first 'Skinner' series I read, it was good that you can pick up who the characters are without having to buy the previous books to figure out who's who. 'Skinner' is portrayed as good at his job, as otherwise what would be the pointin writing about him? Fiction is escapism, however 'Skinner' isn't stretched too far so as to be unbelievable. A delightful read, one that made me buy more 'Skinner' books.
Skinner - the Scottish Jack Ryan - By: , 02 May 2002 
I stumbled by accident upon the Skinner books, & 'Skinners trail' happens to be the first that I've read. As I come from Edinburgh, I looked forward to it. More so having finished off the whole series of Rebus novels.
Well, while the story line is interesting enough to have you picking it up for that half hour before your eyes closein bed, Skinner himself is a surprisingly irritating character. Irritatingin his perfection......as stated above, he's a crack shot, perfect father with the world's most perfect & intelligent baby, wonderful husband, & your run of the mill hard-but-fair super cop.
Even more irritating is his even MORE perfect wife. Mother of the year, beautiful, sexy, intensely loyal wife, a professor of pathology that could teach Quincy everything he knew twice, & crime solver on top of it all.
The likeness to the clotting & sicklyness of the Ryan familyin Tom Clancy's novels is startling. They're all perfect down to their sparkly white teeth.
This lets the Skinner story down big time...the plot is believeable, but the characters are from a children's fairy tale.
Give me the doubt, fears & weaknesses of Rebus everytime.
Needs to do more background research - By: , 23 Jun 2001 I was given this book by a friend who knew I had enjoyed the Inspector Rebus books. Although the story itself was readable enough, I was distracted all the way through by the totally unbelievable detail about Skinner's new baby. His wife seemed perfectly happy to leave her first offspring with anyone to go off to a crime scene, had no trouble establishing breastfeeding & took her brand new baby off to Spain within weeks of its birth. Not only that, but this precocious child was smiling long before the usual time of six weeks, & was weaned on to rusks around the same time when all the recommendations stipulate that babies should not be weaned before at least 3-4 months. As for his wife, I think she should have at least waited until she had had her 6 weeks check-up before doing the wild thing with her husband again! This unfortunate inattention to detail jarred & distracted me from the plot at every turn Sadly, I don't think I'll be reading any more from this series.
Boring Edinburgh cop caper , no match for Rankin - By: ANDREW, 14 Apr 2001 Dont't buy this book if you think it will be anything like Ian Rankin's Rebus series.
The plot is average fare, but the "hero" Skinner is so unbelievable one-dimensional that I struggled to finish this book.
He's a real tough guy that everyone respects, beautiful pathologist wife, karate master, crack shot, yawn, yawn.
It's a book you would only read for it's irritation value - e.g. nearly every chapter finishes with a "!".
