Author: Elly Griffiths
Published: November 15th 2022 by Mariner Books
Format: Kindle, Hardcover, 352 pages
Genre: Police Procedural
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.
Series: Harbinder Kaur #3
First Sentence: Is it possible to forget that you’ve committed a murder?
Blurb: When Cassie Fitzgerald was at school in the late 90s, she and her friends killed a fellow student. Almost twenty years later, Cassie is a happily married mother who loves her job--as a police officer. She closely guards the secret she has all but erased from her memory.
One day her husband finally persuades her to go to a school reunion. Cassie catches up with her high-achieving old friends from the Manor Park School--among them two politicians, a rock star, and a famous actress. But then, shockingly, one of them, Garfield Rice, is found dead in the school bathroom, supposedly from a drug overdose. As Garfield was an eminent--and controversial--MP and the investigation is high profile, it's headed by Cassie's new boss, DI Harbinder Kaur, freshly promoted and newly arrived in London. The trouble is, Cassie can't shake the feeling that one of them has killed again.
Is Cassie right, or was Garfield murdered by one of his political cronies? It's in Cassie's interest to skew the investigation so that it looks like it has nothing to do with Manor Park and she seems to be succeeding.
Until someone else from the reunion is found dead in Bleeding Heart Yard.
My Opinion: Unlike other mysteries, the who-done-it is not evident from the start. The plotting is reminiscent of the game where you must pick which cup hides the marble. Each character is brought to the front, and then just as quickly, they are replaced by another suspect. You have your suspicions, but then again it could be someone else.
With less than a hundred pages to go, I was narrowing it down to the most likely suspect. I kept returning to an overhead conversation -- where a comma could have made all the difference. And by the end, I was still wrong. You can’t call it an easily looked-over suspect since there were no clues. What you can call it is a master storyteller leading her audience down a path, and when you get to the end, you realize you had forgotten to keep track of one person.
I love Elly Griffiths’ writing; she has me running to dictionaries, taking notes, and making me wish I had paid better attention when studying the classics.
Blurb: When Cassie Fitzgerald was at school in the late 90s, she and her friends killed a fellow student. Almost twenty years later, Cassie is a happily married mother who loves her job--as a police officer. She closely guards the secret she has all but erased from her memory.
One day her husband finally persuades her to go to a school reunion. Cassie catches up with her high-achieving old friends from the Manor Park School--among them two politicians, a rock star, and a famous actress. But then, shockingly, one of them, Garfield Rice, is found dead in the school bathroom, supposedly from a drug overdose. As Garfield was an eminent--and controversial--MP and the investigation is high profile, it's headed by Cassie's new boss, DI Harbinder Kaur, freshly promoted and newly arrived in London. The trouble is, Cassie can't shake the feeling that one of them has killed again.
Is Cassie right, or was Garfield murdered by one of his political cronies? It's in Cassie's interest to skew the investigation so that it looks like it has nothing to do with Manor Park and she seems to be succeeding.
Until someone else from the reunion is found dead in Bleeding Heart Yard.
My Opinion: Unlike other mysteries, the who-done-it is not evident from the start. The plotting is reminiscent of the game where you must pick which cup hides the marble. Each character is brought to the front, and then just as quickly, they are replaced by another suspect. You have your suspicions, but then again it could be someone else.
With less than a hundred pages to go, I was narrowing it down to the most likely suspect. I kept returning to an overhead conversation -- where a comma could have made all the difference. And by the end, I was still wrong. You can’t call it an easily looked-over suspect since there were no clues. What you can call it is a master storyteller leading her audience down a path, and when you get to the end, you realize you had forgotten to keep track of one person.
I love Elly Griffiths’ writing; she has me running to dictionaries, taking notes, and making me wish I had paid better attention when studying the classics.
No comments:
Post a Comment