Shadow Witness
Budjette Tan
I love Trese but this one fell a little flat for me, especially after a multi-year gap and the amount of effort I put into procuring it (it’s only available in the Philippines, and random chance whether it’s in any given bookstore–of which there are few in general). Baldisimo’s drawing is as good as ever, but I felt like the writing was pretty weak overall. There were a couple of just total non-sequitur jumps in action within a story. In addition, we actually see fairly little of Alexandra Trese, and therefore of her cool mystery solving, in this volume. Some of the stories just focus on her brothers, and while I appreciate the idea of expanding the universe out a bit, they aren’t as well fleshed out. The story with the priest brother in particular has a good ultimate reveal, but it’s basically an extended fight scene, and would have been much more interesting as extended detective work.