I enjoyed this one! It was easy and fun to just chew through – I started it on the plane, got home, and promptly cracked it back open to finish. It’s a mystery within a mystery and I did enjoy that format for the most part. Head’s up, you mostly finish the first mystery at the halfway point in the book and have to read rest of it to get the answers.
Our main character (I think her name is Susan? I can’t remember) is an editor with a small publisher and we open to her first person narrative as she begins to read the latest submitted novel by their best-selling author. It’s the 9th in his beloved murder mystery series and we get to read it along with her. She warns us before she starts that by the time this is all over, she will have lost her job, her home, and the life she knows. Cue foreboding music.
The reader (us, and her) get to nearly the final chapter of this book when there’s an incredible cliffhanger and then … it’s over. Now Susan has a mystery of her own to solve as she searches for the final chapters and tries to undercover what’s happened to the suddenly-deceased author who seems to have died under circumstances not entirely unlike the victim in this most recent novel. There’s a broad cast of characters, lots of fun puzzles, and genuinely engaging writing. I did not solve the whodunit, but I did find the ending satisfying.
Sounds really interesting!
Hmmm…I’m intrigued.