Tag: crime

#BookReview If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio

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IfWeWereVillainsAbout the Book

Oliver Marks has just served ten years for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day of his release, he is greeted by the detective who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, and he wants to know what really happened a decade before.

As a young actor at an elite conservatory, Oliver noticed that his talented classmates seem to play the same characters onstage and off – villain, hero, temptress – though he was always a supporting role. But when the teachers change the casting, a good-natured rivalry turns ugly, and the plays spill dangerously over into real life.

When tragedy strikes, one of the seven friends is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless…

Format: Paperback (432 pages)    Publisher: Titan Books
Publication date: 13th June 2017 Genre: Crime

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My Review

The author is a devotee of Shakespeare and this certainly comes across in the book. For instance its title is a quote from King Lear. Not only do the fourth year drama students at Dellecher Classical Conservatory study and perform only the works of Shakespeare but the book is peppered with references to and quotations from the Bard’s plays. Indeed the students frequently converse in Shakespeare-like quotations. The book’s structure also mimics a theatrical format being divided into acts and scenes, each act starting with a prologue.

All the characters have flaws although Richard – ‘pure power, six foot three and carved from concrete’ – seems set up from the beginning as the villain of the piece.  There’s an interesting scene in which the students are forced by one of the course tutors to declare their strengths and weaknesses with unflinching honesty.

As the book progresses, the bonds of friendship become increasingly tested and are eventually broken altogether on one momentous night that is no A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The storyline incorporates all the elements of a Shakespearean tragedy: passion, ambition, duplicity, betrayal, revenge, even madness. ‘Actors are by nature volatile – alchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. Heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. Sometimes disaster.’ The modern world intrudes occasionally in the form of drink and drug fuelled parties that last well into the early hours.

Although I enjoyed If We Were Villains, by Act V I was beginning to experience a bit of Shakespeare overload which may have contributed to the sense that the book lacked pace. The obvious comparison is with Donna Tartt’s The Secret History but the enclosed and rather claustrophobic nature of Dellecher Classical Conservatory – described at one point as ‘less academic institution than cult’ – also reminded me a little of Caldonbrae Hall, the boarding school in Madam by Phoebe Wynne.

In three words: Atmospheric, intricate, dramatic

Try something similar: New Boy by Tracy Chevalier

M L RioAbout the Author

M. L. Rio was born in Miami and has just competed her MA in Shakespeare Studies at King’s College London. In 2016 she won a contest to stay in Hamlet’s Castle at Elsinore for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, where she was the first person to sleep in the castle in over 100 years. If We Were Villains is her debut novel.

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#BookReview The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz

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The Twist of a KnifeAbout the Book

‘Our deal is over.’

That’s what reluctant author Anthony Horowitz tells ex-detective Daniel Hawthorne in an awkward meeting. The truth is that Anthony has other things on his mind. His new play, Mindgame, is about to open in London’s Vaudeville theatre. Not surprisingly Hawthorne declines a ticket.

On opening night, Sunday Times critic Harriet Throsby gives the play a savage review, focusing particularly on the writing. The next morning she is found dead, stabbed in the heart with an ornamental dagger which, it turns out, belongs to Anthony and which has his finger prints all over it.

Anthony is arrested, charged with Throsby’s murder, thrown into prison and interrogated. Alone and increasingly desperate, he realises only one man can help him.

But will Hawthorne take his call?

Format: Hardback (384 pages)          Publisher: Century
Publication date: 18th August 2022 Genre: Crime

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My Review

Hmm, how to approach writing a review of a book in which a woman is murdered after writing a negative review? How to resist ‘the pleasure that comes with the twist of a knife’? Just tell the truth, of course.

The Twist of a Knife is the fourth in the author’s crime mystery series featuring ex-Detective Inspector Hawthorne and author Anthony Horowitz in the role of sidekick and, in this case, murder suspect. I really enjoyed the two previous books in the series I’ve read – The Word in Murder and A Line to Kill – and at some point I will get around to reading the second book, The Sentence is Death.

A Twist of the Knife has all the elements fans of the series have come to expect, including the author’s deadpan humour. ‘St John’s Gardens had originally been a cemetery but the dead bodies had all been removed (to Woking, which must have surprised them)’. And when he is arrested, he is sure sales of his children’s books will collapse but that it might help his crime fiction. There are plenty of references to the author’s work – his Alex Rider series, his TV drama Foyles War – and he admits, ‘If there’s a book of mine in a room, it’s always the first thing I’ll see’ but these are balanced by his self-deprecating observations.

Hawthorne is his same old self – taciturn, dismissive of his former colleagues, not afraid to tell a porkie or two to get access to a suspect or when questioning a witness, or to call on the skills of his neighbour Kevin. And Hawthorne’s remarkable observational and deductive skills are once again on display. The author teases us with some more details about Hawthorne’s childhood and private life, although tantalisingly his literary alter ego stops short of further probing even when given an unexpected opportunity. Hawthorne warns him, ‘I don’t want you talking about how and where I live. All right? And I definitely don’t want to read about it in your book’. Oops.

We also learn a few things about Anthony Horowitz, namely that he’s not averse to a bowl of Coco Pops and his library contains five hundred books. (I bet he has more than that really but I completely believe he possesses all the Bond novels and a signed copy of I, Claudius found in a bookshop in Hay-on-Wye.)

The book has a colourful cast of characters, including those appearing in Horowitz’s comedy thriller, Mindgame, the play which attracts such a scathing review from feared theatre critic, Harriet Throsby. Just about everyone has the motive, means and opportunity to have committed the murder but none of them has so much evidence pointing to them as the culprit as Anthony Horowitz.  Did he do it or is someone out to get him?

The final act sees Hawthorne create a mise-en-scène reminiscent of an Agatha Christie novel. Has he worked out whodunnit it? Of course he has. Will you have? I very much doubt it.

The Twist of a Knife is another highly entertaining murder mystery, full of wit and invention.

My thanks to Century for my digital review copy via NetGalley.

In three words: Clever, witty, entertaining

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AnthonyHorowitzAbout the Author

Bestselling author Anthony Horowitz has written two highly acclaimed Sherlock Holmes novels, The House of Silk and Moriarty; three James Bond novels, Trigger Mortis, Forever and a Day and With a Mind to Kill; the acclaimed bestselling mystery novels Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders and the Detective Hawthorne novels, The Word is Murder, The Sentence is Death, A Line To Kill, and the latest A Twist of Knife.

He is also the author of the teen spy Alex Rider series, and responsible for creating and writing some of the UK’s most loved and successful TV series, including Midsomer Murders and Foyle’s War. In January 2022 he was awarded a CBE for his services to literature.

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The Twist of a Knife Anthony Horowitzwitz