Review by deedeebar -- Pancake Money by Finn Bell

[deedeebar]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Pancake Money" by Finn Bell.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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Official Review: Pancake Money by Finn Bell.
This story completely pulls the reader into a mystery that you don’t understand what is happening. Until the last few lines, then you start speculating.

Pancake Money by Finn Bell tells a story from the viewpoint of Bobby Ress, a young police officer. Bobby works with another officer, Pollo. Pollo tells Bobby a story of his childhood. His mother knew his father would be drunk, even before he came home, she gave Pollo his brother, and his sister, Natia coins that were meant for the church and told the children to go to Aunty Manaia’s shop to buy a pancake. Pollo and his brother would buy the pancakes, but his sister, Natia would take the coins to church and pray. As Natia got older, she would throw the coins into the sea.

The story unfolds into a surprisingly understandable Forensic Psychology lecture that leaves the reader wondering “Where is the story is going?” The reader realizes that the Psychology group was learning about pain; how it can be a lasting affect and how people can change because of it. People would do anything to stop pain. This idea plays into the rest of the story’s mysterious killings.
Gathering the passage about pain and the scene created in the first section of the book, the reader better be ready for a thriller of unknown depth.

Officer Bobby Ress is looking at a dead body, beaten beyond recognition of it even being a person. Bobby is studying the pain the dead priest must have felt, trying to figure out where the beating started since he knows how it ended. Talk about having a bad Monday
Pancake Money has me curious and excited to read about how this story develops and how this story ends. I like the narrative aspect of the writing and that the story takes place in one week. It gives the reader an idea about the main character, Bobby Ress who is a police officer, what he has to deal with in one week, and the analytical methods he uses in his line of work. Adding Bobby’s loving marriage with Em, and the love for his daughter, Eva, helps in keeping the character balanced. It was also interesting that the main characters were given backstories about where they were from. Pollo was Samoan, his wife was Māori. Em’s family were immigrants from Italy. Parts of the story had mild hints of Silence of the Lambs mixed with the television show Hannibal. A serial killer who knows the human body and poses his victim for an audience. The fence impaling scene reminiscent of the ending fate of many villains and other characters in movies such as The Omen, Ghost, and Saruman in the extended edition of Return of the King. The ending is not a short blunt passage; rather it is a well-explored discussion that relates to the first passage in the book.

There are so many sections of this story I could write about and with hopes of not spoiling anything. The story has some detailed shootings and explicitly described death scenes so I would recommend this to teens and older. I give this book 4 out of 4 stars. I enjoyed being held captive by this story. There are some grammatical errors but none that took away from the compelling story.

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Pancake Money
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