I have reached the fourth and final volume of the set of Hooley and Roper mysteries I acquired. I’ve got no major complaints to make about The Case of the Exploding Shop, but I can’t praise it very highly either.

Just to remind you, Brian Hooley and Jonathan Roper are London police detectives. The gimmick of the series is that Roper is on the autism spectrum. He’s brilliant at analysis, but other cops resent his tactlessness. Hooley is an easygoing sort who manages to get along with him, profiting from his investigative insights. Their current friction rises from the fact that Roper has noticed (correctly) signs of incipient heart disease in Hooley, and is nagging him to eat better and get more exercise.

During a single morning, a world-famous computer mogul is severely burned by a bomb detonated while he’s making a presentation on a new product. Then an Italian politician visiting London is murdered with a shotgun. And a bomb kills a number of shoppers at a fashionable Sloan Square boutique.

Hooley and Roper go to work, assisted now by a new female team member.

I guess, when I pick up a story about an autistic detective, I’m always looking for something along the lines of Monk on TV. Hooley and Roper are just not as much fun (at least to me). Roper’s value is now pretty well acknowledged on the Force, so there’s not a lot of office opposition. Roper, we are told, has been working on his social skills as well. I’m happy for him, but it makes the story less interesting.

Another thing that didn’t work well for me is Roper’s “rainbow spectrum,” a mental filing and classification system he uses to organize his thinking on complex problems. It’s a useful fictional device, I guess, but it’s also a sort of a black box – the reader can’t follow the logical process. That, I think, sacrifices intrigue.

Also, I’d like to see Hooley have more of a life off the job. Give him a girlfriend or something.

I didn’t hate The Case of the Exploding Shop, but it didn’t raise my pulse rate either. No major cautions for language or subject matter are called for.