As a book reviewer, I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher or author to facilitate this review. I received no other compensation, and all opinions are always 100% my own.
After the untimely death of her mother, a best-selling crime fiction author who falls off a ladder, Niamh is even more at a loose end. I mean it’s not like she was impressing her relatives beforehand, but things are really bad now. Grieving and at a loss as to how to handle her grief, she moves into her mother’s cottage and does her best to ignore the neighbors and survive without even listening to the last voicemail her mother left her. That is, until she comes home one day to find her kitchen monopolized by none other than Leah Rebecca Overton, the super sleuth herself, clad all in black and never needing to eat or use the bathroom. Which is why Niamh is able to escape to the bathroom to get a grip on herself. Because Leah is a fictional character, the star of her mother’s books, and she has come to announce to Niamh that Annie, her mother, was murdered, and that she’ll be helping Niamh figure out what exactly happened.
Niamh has always felt extra insecure about Leah, her opposite in almost every way. Leah is ultra competent and driven, energetic and purposeful. So it’s hard to suddenly have a real-life–er, psychotic dramatization? grief-induced hallucination?–Niamh’s not sure, exactly, but the fact is that only she can see Leah, but Leah is always there. On top of it all, Leah is judgmental and keeps pushing Niamh to put on actual clothes and shoes and get out of the house. Since she’s only spent time in books, she’s unprepared for the indignities of real life–how long a car journey actually takes, for example. Their dynamic is squabbling siblings, and it’s really funny.
Niamh finds herself getting to know the neighbors and looking at possible motives and opportunities, even joining a grief group in her search for clues. But although she detests the term “grief journey”, this book is exactly that. Niamh and Annie were supposed to have had time to sort things out between them, and their relationship was unfinished, messy. It’s so unfair that things are now frozen between them, that they never had a chance to iron things out.
How to Kill a Crime Writer is a remarkable book–part crime solving duo comedy, part village mystery, part grief treatise, as we walk with the extremely sympathetic Niamh through the opening stages of dealing with the loss of her mother. It’s really well-done and succeeds on multiple levels. Highly recommended.
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