Kadi P's Reviews > Trapped!

*Very mild spoilers, read at your own discretion.*

The Plot
When I got half way through the book I thought that the biggest weakness of it was that the plot was so convoluted and confusing. The issue was to do with the scale of what was happening. There wasn’t just 1 case; there were 3:
1. The current case: a spy trading US inside secrets to Russia through books.
2. The cold case: stolen Russian Imperial Collection books.
3. The “is this really a case” case: Dan Napoli and the guys over at organised crime following Florian and Margaret.

And there wasn’t just 1 baddie; there were 4:
1. The Russian spy
2. 1 out of the 4 cold case suspects
3. Dan Napoli
4. Nicolae Nevrescu (is he really a bad guy?)

The amount of things that were going on at once became confusing. It became hard to remember how the cold case was relevant to the new case and everything was saturated by 4 suspects from the old case, plenty of other new faces and the return of numerous old faces.

However, the more I read the more I realised that the ginormous nature of the plot and the intricate links between the details of all the seemingly separate cases was really a strength of the plot.
What Ponti has done is make a book that encompasses and mirrors TOAST. All the small things within each of the cases add up to one big answer.
I also found it enjoyable how confusing all the links between the cases became because Ponti acknowledged it. The characters referred to it as the “Gordian Knot” which is a real mythological thing which means everything was creating a confusingly involved problem.

And around the 65% mark things got really interesting. The point at which (view spoiler)[Marcus was accused of being corrupt (hide spoiler)] was when things really heated up and quickened. Before then was just a build up and everything after that was just a downhill race to the solution.

Overall, the plot was essentially one giant snowball effect. One thing went wrong which led to more things going wrong and then things worsened and suddenly a huge mess of a situation came bustling towards Florian and Margaret and they became entangled in the culmination of several cases.

The Characters
Florian and Margaret were pretty well-written. It not like they were new so nothing surprising was brought up in terms of character development, they were a solid continuation of who they were in the last 2 books.

None of the cold case suspects stood out as being particularly different. But I liked the connections made to Marcus’ past. That really helped to explore a part of Marcus that the reader (and protagonists) have never seen before.

Nicolae Nevrescu is honestly a fave character of mine. He’s like this underrated good guy posing as a bad guy and every time he pops up I get excited. And he pops at a lot of unexpected times.

The real surprise character here is Florian’s mum. She is an unexpected star. It’s not like she hasn’t had scenes in the previous 2 books, but she is front and centre in multiple scenes here and she is a star! She is totally authentic and powerful. Now you can see where Florian gets it from😂

What I love the most out of all the characterisation is the diversity and authenticity in a way I’m not used to seeing. You have Florian’s mum who actually speaks Italian in a scene which got me all excited (I’ve studied Italian for 2 years and I love the language) and, yes, I translated it without any kind of translator. Nicolae is also diverse, and so is Margaret. There’s a whole theme of diversity that isn’t the generic black or Asian representation. It’s a much more specific, focused and noticeable type of representation of diversity that is extremely enjoyable and refreshing.

All in all, a mystery that has so many tangled lines that it’ll confuse you before they eventually straighten out. This book is nothing completely new in comparison to the last 2 books, but it touches on different things that weren’t explored on them. So, not a bad book, an enjoyable read and time well spent.