The Murder Man/The Murder Bag.

The Murder Man (released as The Murder Bag in the UK) is the first book in a trilogy of police thrillers featuring police investigator Max Wolfe. 

A brutal serial killer who kills in a grisly trade mark fashion is at large on the streets of London.

 At first the attacks appear random, until Wolfe links them to a photograph of seven men who attended the same Public School 20 years ago. What happened at the school? Who is killing off the men in the photograph? And why?

The plot here is good with twists, turns and red herrings but I did manage to figure it all out at quite an early stage. Wolfe is a sympathetic character to whom I could relate somewhat but I didn't find him to have the charisma and presence of say Cormoran Strike in the series of suspense novels by Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling (The Murder Man reminded me somewhat of those books, although it was much less accomplished).

I did enjoy this and it was an easy to read, distracting 'beach' type of book that is easy to get absorbed in but I did have a few gripes with it... At times I found that some of the writing wasn't that well executed, it read a little awkwardly and there were sections of the book that, while I can see they were included to flesh out the character of Wolfe, seemed a tad irrelevant and detracted from the ongoing action (the boxing club and the family spring to mind). And whilst I will read pretty much anything I did find that some of the scenes here were simply too gory and descriptive, in particular the prologue...
Which brings me to the way that the female characters were portrayed. It was for the most part misogynistic, the women were all pretty much caricatures and they all had flawed characters. This was the most off putting part for me and I felt that it let both the book and the author down.

Overall, I probably would read another book in this series simply because I love thrillers but I won't rush to do so.