Review: Old City Hall

Old City Hall by Robert Rotenberg

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The setting of this mystery/thriller is Toronto and the author includes a lot of local history and information about the city which I thought really added a lot to the novel. The book begins with profiles of the lawyers and police officers, and a few other folks, then moves into the investigation. The point of view switches among the various investigators so as the book goes on you only know as much about the crime as the investigative team does. Overall I thought this was an effective way to present the story, but it made the ending where we had to get the background on all the people involved in the crime a bit dense.

Overall I thought this was a good book, my only quibble with it was the "chase" scene toward the end where someone is racing to the courthouse with information that will prevent a miscarriage of justice. It was overdone and ridiculous. The author is a Canadian attorney and was his first novel. I look forward to reading more of his books.