This is a fairly unoriginal story told in a somewhat original way, very successfully. It grabbed me on page 1 and took over my day.

Kapoor’s writing, from both a content and style perspective, is a lot like Don Winslow‘s, but better. Pages fly by with fast-paced dialogue and four or five word paragraphs. You’re a hundred pages in and you feel like you just picked it up.

The story reminded me a lot of The Cartel, to the extent that I was actually making a mental flow chart of which character’s story arc aligned with the various characters in the Winslow novel. So yeah, it’s less-than-original. But Kapoor executes it (zing) extremely well.

It really works. Until the last 150 pages.

The first two-thirds of the book are basically the same character’s story told by two very different third-parties, but it’s never boring. Kapoor develops her characters well and they have distinct voices that you grow to like. The last third is kind of all-over-the-place. She shifts perspectives and style a lot, and not always successfully. Two newspaper articles substitute for probably 100 pages of plot (including a major twist!), which was kind of disappointing. A major character is given a dense 25 page backstory out of the blue, which brings the momentum to a screeching halt. The timeline gets confusing, and the last section uncharacteristically shifts perspectives paragraph-by-paragraph, which is a bit jarring. Some say it ‘falls apart’ at the end, but I think that’s too harsh. It just loses its rhythm.

But she sticks the landing. I’ll be waiting for the next one for sure. I highly recommend it.