Up until now, the only monsters the LAPD had ever seen were of the human variety…
When two down-on-their-luck detectives are forced to work together on a series of cold cases, they slowly begin to uncover a common thread that may hold the key to solving some of their town’s grizzliest unsolved murders. 
Little do they know that the same key will unlock secrets from a different dimension; one filled with monstrous creatures that should never be disturbed.

I was hooked by the premise of this story. I still am. I love the idea of LAPD homicide detectives having to get their heads around the existence of demons. Unfortunately, by the end of the twelth chapter, 22% through the book, I was still at the point where the two newly partnered detectives were scratching their heads and asking, “Do you think there’s something odd about a murder where someone gets their head ripped off but has no other injuries?” Well, duh!

So far, apart from an offstage growl in the first, slightly cheesy chapter, there hasn’t been a demon in sight.

What there has been is a slow, sometimes painfully slow, set up on the backgrounds of both of the detectives and how they came to work together.

That might have been fine with if there’d been a little more foreshadowing of the woo woo stuff and if the chapters had been better written.

Overall, I thought the story had potential. Some of the banter/verbal aggression between the cops works well. I liked the grim but believable dark humour. The pace felt so slow that if I’d been watching a movie I’d have fast-forwarded to the interesting stuff.

The main reason I’m setting this aside is that the style of writing doesn’t work for me. The characters all sound the same when they talk. The prose is utilitarian but not sparse. It gets the job done but it sounds like a student padding a report with bigger words to give it more authority. It made me sigh when it should have made me shiver and it wasn’t holding my attention.

If it the story gets made into a movie, I’d watch it. If someone edits it down to a short story, I’d give it a try. I just can’t make it through 347 pages of this style of writing.