Hunters in the Dark is about a man named Robert who decides, after a turn of circumstances, to disappear and become someone else. The back cover made the story sound like one of intrigue - his first night containing a "jinxed" bad of money, a "suave" American, a trunk full of heroin and a rich doctor's daughter that "changes Robert's life forever". (I'm putting all this in quotes so you know that I'm dubious about this whole description.). Did all those things happen? Yes, I suppose they did. Did they all happen on his first night? No. Did they all happen to him? No. There was no game of cat and mouse either in my opinion, as the back copy describes. Overall I just felt like I was sold on an idea that this book didn't deliver.

I cared very little for this book. Not because it was badly written or because I found its subject matter questionable, but that it just didn't make me care about it. 

I didn't care about the characters or what was going to happen to them. I didn't care about the story and what was going to happen next. I didn't care about the situation or the circumstances or the setting or anything. I was just meh about the whole thing. I think that is why, by the end of the book, my heart just wasn't in it. I finished it because I felt I had to, not because I wanted to. 

I will give it this: as a couple of the reviews suggest, Hunters in the Dark is very immersive. I felt the slow warmth of Cambodia through the whole thing, especially in the beginning as the story was just unfolding. I could feel myself there. Osborne did a fantastic job in establishing the atmosphere of his book and then sticking with it. I feel that there was a certain vagueness to his writing as well that contributed to the whole feeling; like even his sentences held the essence of the country. I give him props for that. 

I wasn't wowed by this book, or even invested in it at any point while reading it. I wouldn't recommend this book, not because of sketchy content, but because I just couldn't get into it. 

p.s. There were 10 f-bombs. Other than that, the language was very mild. There were a couple references to intimacy, not at all descriptive though, more declarative. "They made love and then they caught a cab" kind of thing. There is one scene where a man goes to a brothel and hires a girl and that scene is a little more descriptive in that it had to lay out what was happening plot wise, but there wasn't anything too inappropriate. Overall, I felt any suggestive content was just that: suggested at, rather than outright, in your face described. 

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.