Book Review – The Cracked Mirror by Christopher Brookmyre

About the Book

FORGET WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW. THIS IS NOT THAT CRIME NOVEL

You know Johnny Hawke. Hard-bitten LAPD homicide detective. Always in trouble with his captain, always losing partners, but always battling for the truth, whatever it takes.

You know Penny Coyne. The little old lady who has solved multiple murders in her otherwise sleepy village, despite bumbling local police. A razor-sharp mind in a Sunday best hat.

Against all the odds, against the usual story, their worlds are about to collide. It starts with a dead writer and a mysterious wedding invitation. It will end with a rabbit hole that goes so deep, Johnny and Penny might just come to question not just whodunnit, but whether they want to know the answer.

Format: ebook (496 pages) Publisher: Abacus
Publication date: 18th July 2024 Genre: Crime

Find The Cracked Mirror on Goodreads

Purchase The Cracked Mirror from Bookshop.org [Disclosure: If you buy books linked to our site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops]

My Review

The Cracked Mirror is described as ‘a cross-genre hybrid of Agatha Christie and Michael Connelly’. (Having never read a book by Michael Connelly that didn’t help me much.)

Initially, the story alternates between two different storylines. There’s Penny Coyne, known for solving murders in Glen Cluthar which, like St Mary Mead in Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple series, has an unusually high death rate for a small village. However, the latest murder in Glen Cluthar has a darker side to it than Penny’s used to. Added to this, she’s beginning to worry about strange lapses in her memory and wondering if she should follow her nephew’s suggestion that she move into a residential home. Being fiercely independent, it’s something she has resisted up until now.

And then we have LAPD detective Johnny Hawke, who’s not afraid to bend the rules in order to bring bad guys to justice and is always a hair’s breadth away from death. He’s investigating a death which in all respects looks like suicide – room locked from the inside – but about which Johnny has his doubts.

At this point the two storylines come together as both Penny and Johnny find themselves – for different reasons – in the same hotel in Scotland where a society wedding is taking place. Suddenly something happens which has similarities with the case Johnny was investigating meaning Penny and Johnny find themselves becoming partners, albeit with very different approaches when it comes to solving crimes.

That makes it sound straightforward but it gets increasingly complicated as more and more characters are introduced to the point where I found it hard to keep track of who was who and how they were related. And at around 80% of the way through, well let’s just say it goes in a completely different direction that left my head spinning even more. (Some readers may pick up references that eluded me meaning it doesn’t come as quite such a surprise for them.)

I loved Johnny and thought he was an authentic representation of the maverick cop beloved of American crime thrillers. I didn’t get the same feeling about Penny, perhaps because of the contemporary setting and the fact Glen Cluthar is soon left far behind.

If the author set himself the challenge of creating a mind-bending crime novel then he definitely succeeded. If you’re game for a crime novel that will get your brain working hard, The Cracked Mirror will be right up your street.

In three words: Clever, imaginative, complicated

About the Author

Christopher Brookmyre was a journalist before becoming a full-time novelist with the publication of his award-winning debut Quite Ugly One Morning, which established him as one of Britain’s leading crime writers. His 2016 novel Black Widow won both the McIlvanney Prize and the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year award. Brookmyre’s novels have sold more than two million copies in the UK alone. He also writes historical fiction with Marisa Haetzman, under the pseudonym ‘Ambrose Parry’.

Connect with Christopher
Website | Facebook | X/Twitter