Two detective novels

and I didn't enjoy either of them very much (which probably means that it's time for me to STOP WASTING MY TIME READING NOVELS and get properly back to work--funny how quickly self-indulgence goes from being enjoyable to being a torment). The first was Simon Kernick's The Murder Exchange, which I didn't like nearly as much as his first one. The writing felt a bit flat and neither of the two first-person narrators really came to life. It picked up a bit towards the end, though. The second was Peter Robinson's Playing with Fire, which was pretty much exactly what you'd expect. Perfectly fine, but nothing special. I must confess that I always have to remind myself that Robinson is not the same writer as Reginald Hill, their detectives (Alan Banks for Robinson, Peter Pascoe for Hill) seem to be cut so much from the same cloth.