Tag: crime

Book Review – The Cracked Mirror by Christopher Brookmyre

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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

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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’.

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The Kellerby Code by Jonny Sweet: A Book Club Discussion

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About the Book

In a world he can’t afford, Edward is just about getting by. He spends his days scurrying after his friends, doing everything to prove his value. But not to worry; the attention of his beloved Stanza and the respite he finds in her ancestral home, Kellerby House, provide all the reward he needs.

Until he realises that Stanza is in love with his best friend, Robert, forcing Edward to re-evaluate what those closest to him are actually worth. No price is too high to stop the life he has strived for slipping from his grip. Especially when he won’t be the one paying.

Format: Paperback (384 pages) Publisher: Faber and Faber
Publication date: 27th February 2025 Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Crime

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The Discussion

The Kellerby Code was the April pick of the book club run by Waterstones in Reading.

Everyone agreed the book was very funny. As you’d expect from an author who started out as a comedian, there are great one-liners, witty dialogue and acerbic observation. For example, when Edward is introduced to one of Stanza’s schoolfriends, Dinita.

They were told immediately that she was heading up inclusivity, diversity and outreach at Hendepul, a global television firm, and that her employers didn’t at all understand black youth. Dinita had moved to London from Iran, where her father was involved in oil, been educated at public school and now lived in a large house in Notting Hill, but still: ‘These people just do not understand the average immigrant experience.’

There are some very amusing scenes. One I’d pick out is a dinner party hosted by Robert at which, as a parlour game, each guest is handed a folded piece of paper describing a personality trait or conversational tic they must perform. At the end of the evening others must guess what it was. Edward adopts his given persona so enthusiastically it causes alarm to other guests. However, there was a point in the book (involving a horse) where people felt the humour tipped over into absurdity.

Quite a few of us found pretty much all the characters unlikeable. Personally that meant I couldn’t really care what happened to them whilst others absolutely rejoiced in a book with so many unlikeable characters. There were mixed opinions about Edward. Some felt sorry for him. Others (me included) felt his original actions had unintended consequences meaning he increasingly lost control of events. One person, drawing on the comparisons to Patricia Highsmith’s character Ripley, thought Edward was a portrait of a psychopath. And they had a point because events turn increasingly macabre with Edward displaying an unexpected, or perhaps up until now repressed, capacity for violence.

The author is a devotee of P. G. Wodehouse and there are plenty of nods to the Jeeves stories. For example, Edward’s surname is Jevons and he acquires a sort of inner voice he names Plum, which was Wodehouse’s nickname. Edward performs butler-like duties for his friends, Robert and Stanza, such as picking up their dry cleaning, organising birthday presents and preparing meals. Desperate to retain Robert’s friendship, he’s happy to act as ‘fixer’ but the problems he’s asked to tackle for Robert go way beyond anything Jeeves might have had to sort out for Bertie Wooster. And although Bertie may have been hapless at least he was amiably hapless. I felt Robert was completely self-absorbed, sucking up to Edward when he needed something and then ghosting him when it was done, or even denying he’d asked Edward to do it in the first place.

I was surprised, bearing in mind the cover, that Kellerby House doesn’t actually feature much until near the end of the book and that, considering his supposed devotion to the place, Edward’s final act seems rather bizarre. There was a lot of discussion about the ending which I’m not going to detail here but safe to say there are a few ways you could interpret it and the motivations of those involved.

Our discussions often lead to thoughts about similarities to other books. People came up with (obviously) The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith but also The Secret History by Donna Tartt and the film ‘Saltburn’.

Although I was more lukewarm about The Kellerby Code than some other book club members, I still found a lot to enjoy in it. It was definitely a great choice for a book club because it provoked a lot of different views. In fact, the discussion could have gone on for much longer than the allotted hour.

The Kellerby Code is an entertaining mystery/thriller with a generous helping of black comedy. If you’ve seen the film ‘Wicked Little Letters’ (for which the author wrote the screenplay) you’ll have an idea what to expect.

About the Author

Author Jonny Sweet

Jonny Sweet started out winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Newcomer in 2009, and in the intervening years, his work as a writer and actor has been varied and exceptional. His first feature was Wicked Little Letters, starring Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley. Alongside writing and acting, he develops and produces TV and film through his award-winning company People Person Pictures. The Kellerby Code is his debut novel. (Photo: Amazon author page)