The Other Half
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4.1 • 31 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
You know how they live. This is how they die...
A STUNNING DEBUT FROM YOUR NEXT FAVORITE MYSTERY WRITER • Rupert's 30th birthday party is a black-tie dinner at the Kentish Town McDonald's—catered with cocaine and expensive champagne. The morning after, his girlfriend Clemmie is found murdered on Hampstead Heath, a single stiletto heel jutting from under a bush.
“A perfectly modern whodunnit.” —Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author of I Will Find You
Who killed Clemmie? Was it the blithe, sociopathic boyfriend? His impossibly wealthy godmother? The gallery owner with whom Clemmie was having an affair? Or was it the result of something else entirely?
All the party-goers have alibis. Naturally. This investigation is going to be about aristocrats and Classics degrees, Instagram influencers and whose father knows who.
Or is it 'whom'? Detective Caius Beauchamp isn't sure. He's sharply dressed, smart, and thoroughly modern—he discovers Clemmie's body on his early morning jog. As he searches for the dark truth beneath the luxurious life of these London socialites, a wall of staggering wealth and privilege threatens to shut down his investigation before it's even begun. Can Caius peer through the tangled mess of connections in which the other half live—and die—before the case is wrenched from his hands? Bitingly funny, full of shocking twists, and all too familiar, The Other Half is a truly stunning debut.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Vassell's crackling debut skewers England's current crop of gilded youth. Rich, handsome Rupert Beauchamp, who's about to inherit a title, throws himself a lavish 30th birthday party in London's buzzy Kentish Town: it's an ironic black-tie affair at the local McDonald's, catered with buckets of champagne and mountains of cocaine. The next morning, while British-Jamaican detective Caius Beauchamp (no relation to Rupert) is out jogging, he happens upon the corpse of Rupert's influencer girlfriend, Clemmie, in Hampstead Heath. Given that all the party attendees have alibis, the obvious suspect is Nell, a beautiful editor at a literary press whom Rupert has long planned to leave Clemmie for. Nell, however, has grown ambivalent about Rupert and his social circle, so Caius pursues other leads as well. His search takes him through a web of overprivileged suspects on whom the detective casts a half-contemptuous, half-envious eye, and eventually delivers him to the doorstep of a murderous, elite conspiracy. Vassell gleefully plunges into the underbelly of 21st-century entitlement, creating vivid sketches of aimless young Londoners gorging on designer clothes and designer drugs—sometimes at the expense of her core mystery. Still, as a diamond-sharp satirical whodunit in the vein of Liane Moriarty, this succeeds.
Customer Reviews
A Star is Born
An incredible first book by a brilliant writer. More twists and turns than Piccadilly Circus and twice as thrilling. Small wonder Ms Vassell’s second book, The In Crowd, walked away with the Edgar Award.
SO English
A bit too english for my tastes and ability to really empathize with the characters or their motivations, but well written mystery nontheless.