A Prescription for...a gore-and-trauma-free mystery
A niche request but Richard Osman, Susie Dent, Bella Mackie and Janice Hallett ride to the rescue.
“Can you recommend a book?” she asked.
Could you be more specific?
“A mystery. But not a gory mystery. I don’t want blood and brains everywhere. Nothing depressing or misogynistic - why is it that so many writers like to write about young women being raped and murdered and their body parts being scattered around? And nothing too traumatising or terrifying - I read before bed and I need to be able to sleep. But before you suggest it, not one of those Golden Age mysteries.” I shut my mouth. “Something new and a bit different. Clever, but I want a fair chance of guessing whodunnit. Oh, and definitely not a macho man type protagonist.” She sat back, folded her arms and looked at me enquiringly.
Alright, alright. I did say ‘more specific’. Mystery Woman - this one’s for you…
I know belts are tight and voices on here many, but if you’d like to support Book(ish) and my writing, you can upgrade to a paid subscription.
If you wanted to win my heart, a really good mystery would do it. Possibly with a side of coffee and digestive biscuits. Although I recently took a trip to Ikea and bought a tin of these ginger and almond biscuits and they really are exceptionally good. A couple of charming chaps came over this week to measure up for a doubtless eye-watering quote for work on the house. I made coffee and proffered these biscuits and the one who resembled a grown-up Penfold told me I was “extraordinarily kind” and the biscuits “really quite extraordinarily good”. So there you have it.
As you may know, I dearly love a Golden Age mystery, but as I am not permitted to speak of them here, I won’t. Not this time. Stand down, Mystery Woman. And my instinct is to shout about Chris Whittaker’s All the Colours of the Dark - which is so much more than the thriller you might think it is. It’s about the survival and resilience of the human spirit, to hope beyond all reason because love prevents you from doing otherwise, and the ripple effect of trauma. It’s brilliant, but it’s also traumatic: girls are disappearing in small-town Missouri, 13-year-old Joseph ‘Patch’ sacrifices himself to save a girl and is abducted instead. His best friend Saint refuses to believe he is lost - but when he returns he is changed and lost. The search for absolution and restitution will dominate both their lives. It’s a masterwork, but it will definitely keep you awake at night.
So the obvious place to start is with the new Richard Osman - who may now be richer than Croesus thanks to the juggernaut that is the Thursday Murder Club. It is possibly (definitely) churlish of me to have eyed his new book somewhat askance. No Ron and Ibrahim. No Elizabeth. No Joyce. What is an Osman without Joyce? (I am hopping keen for the Netflix adaptation - the casting is nigh-on flawless.) Could he replicate the warm glow, the trick of igniting your internal central heating, whilst gently tickling your funny bone?
Obviously, the answer is yes.
We Solve Murders introduces Amy, a sharp, attractive, top-level, hush hush private security agent. Amy has a happy and very interesting marriage, conducted at a distance, to financial whizz Adam (I would have liked more of this - perhaps in later books?), and she is very close to Steve, her father-in-law. A retired copper, Steve lives in a village in the New Forest, where he records any shady goings-on via his dictaphone - “Steve hadn’t been hoodwinked by the hollyhocks and the cupcakes and the cheery ‘Good morning’ greetings.” He’s a dedicated member of a pub quiz team and likes a bit of proper pub grub, still chats to his beloved deceased wife, and is well and truly no nonsense: “I don’t have sunglasses… I’m not a male model”.
Joyce who? (Kidding. I still love you, Joyce.)
When Amy finds herself in the frame for a whole string of murders and on the run with her latest client, Rosie D’Antonio “the world’s bestselling author, if you don’t count Lee Child”, there is only one person she can turn to. Not her suave boss, Jeff, who may or may not have survived an attempt on his life. Not his former partner, the forensically accurate Dutchman, Henk (“It is not a little envelope, it is an A4.”) Nope. It’s Steve all the way. As reluctant as Steve is to leave the safety of his life, he loves Amy, so reluctantly climbs on a private jet, gloomily realising there are no sausage rolls on board, nurturing the quiet hope he’ll be back from “the quiz night next Wednesday”.
Much hi-jinks and globetrotting silliness ensue. Rosie in particular is a hoot: frank, full-on, sexually voracious, a woman to whom the word ‘no’ is a challenge. To be honest, I didn’t really mind whodunnit, I was enjoying the ride so much. What marks Osman out is that he genuinely likes people and enjoys their foibles and idiosyncrasies. He has such enormous warmth - he is never lofty or sneering. It’s like being wrapped in a blanket of witty, astute observation - and kindness.
But if this is a bit too soft and not mystery enough, then try Bella Mackie’s What a Way to Go which is precise opposite to saccharine. Mackie spawned a whole new sub-genre of nasty, unreliable narrators with her bestselling debut How to Kill Your Family. The follow-up is grimly relishable.
Faithless, oleaginous millionaire Anthony Wistern dies horribly at his wildly lavish 60th birthday party on his estate. His Succession-esque clan - his progeny Jemima, Freddy, Lyra and Clara and his chilly, expensive wife, Olivia - are not devastated by their loss. Quite the opposite. They’re an awful bunch: narcissistic, scheming, squabbling, viciously self-interested and back-stabbing. Watching it all from afar is a true crime podcaster and - in a neat twist - Anthony himself, who is trapped in some kind of waiting room hinterland between life and death until he can solve the mystery of whodunnit.
Not one single character is likeable - in a weird way, there’s something freeing about this: no conflicted loyalties or emotional connections - and it’s dark, deliciously horrible fun.
I’ll be chatting to Bella on Saturday 19th October at The Little Bookshop’s wine and crime evening in the pretty spot of Cookham. Tickets available here. (More tickets have just been added after an almost immediate sell-out, so make haste if you fancy it!)
Janice Hallett is the QUEEN of ingenuity. She keeps coming up with fresh approaches to the traditional crime format with which to delight us. If you haven’t read The Appeal, then please remedy this forthwith - it’s one of my favourite works of recent detective fiction. But I might be chastised for it being insufficiently new, so get your hands on The Examiner.
This time, we’re in for murderous intent and shadowy goings-on during a multimedia MA course at Royal Hastings University. We know this from the off, as it opens with a message from the titular examiner, who thinks that “something awful may have happened”: one of the students is missing and the others might be complicit - perhaps even to the point of murder.
We’re presented with the coursework notes, correspondence emails and messaging groups between the six students, and teachers. They’re a disparate crew - from Alyson an established artist and a showpiece ‘get’ for the course organiser, to stressed city exec Cameron who mistakenly thinks the course might prove a panacea, and confident-to-the-point-of-bumptious young Jem.
Optimism soon turns to petty squabbling and open mistrust. The more we learn, the clearer it becomes that several students are not being entirely honest about who they really are - or their motives for involvement. And when the students are instructed to team up to design an art installation for their final assignment (retro radios sending mysterious messages are involved) it gets very twisty and very dark. Your job here is to work out if anyone is actually dead - and if so, who is it - and whodunnit. Challenge accepted?
Everyone’s favourite lexicographer (other lexicographers are doubtless available), Susie Dent, has turned crime writer to really splendid effect. Her debut, Guilty by Definition is everything I could have hoped for: atmospheric, erudite and extremely clever.
It’s set amongst the dreaming spires of Oxford in the offices of the Clarendon English Dictionary, to which recently-appointed senior editor Martha Thornhill has returned after a stint in Berlin.
The team receives regular correspondence, most of which is enquiring or quibbling about the etymology of words, but then postcards with Shakespearean quotes about enemies, truth, betrayal and friendship start turning up. Followed by some truly baffling, highly convoluted cryptic letters that suggest that foul play is afoot i.e. murder most horrid.
The letters are linked to the disappearance of Charlie, Martha’s older sister - a golden girl with both brains and beauty. Charlie vanished without a trace over a decade earlier, which goes some way to explaining why Martha (who adored her sister but still feels she lives in her shadow - especially at home, where her father keeps Charlie’s room as an untouched mausoleum) decamped to Berlin.
Martha and her team - and you, the reader - are charged with solving the mystery of Charlie’s disappearance. (Although if you can solve Dent’s fiendishly tricky literary puzzles, your brain is superior to mine.) As a picture of Charlie emerges, we see the golden girl of Martha’s memory is rather more tainted and multifaceted, and that she was keeping a potentially astonishing secret. Lives, it seems, have as many hidden secrets as words.
Yes, anyone who loves words will enjoy Dent’s evident joy in delving into the history of words - there is zero hesitation when an opportunity arises to sidetrack down the path of etymological discovery. It’s all part of the fun and the plot - in fact, it’s crucial to the latter.
I might also add the quirky, original How to Solve Your Own Murder, Kate Atkinson’s BRILLIANT Death at the Sign of the Rook (my thoughts here) and the latest Elly Griffiths’ The Last Word. Plus a couple of terrific pre-orders: Murder at the Castle featuring one Angela Merkel as sleuth (well, she does have time on her hands…) and To Love a Liar - LV Matthews latest thriller which made my heart beat apace.
Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments below. And if you’d like a book prescription, let me know - I am here to serve! And a small request: if you enjoy this post, please do leave a comment or a heart, or even better- share it to your community.
I love the sound of all these recommendations. My only question is, which one do I read first? Also I don't live near an Ikea so might have to find a substitute biscuit
LOVE a cosy mystery, particularly at this time of the year. Enjoyed the new Osman and loved the first Mackie, so new one definitely on my TBR pile, as is the Dent. Thank you for the recommendations - books and biscuits! Will be tracking those down on my next trip to IKEA!