West Heart Kill
A novel
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA NEW BLOOD DAGGER AWARD
LOOKING FOR AN ANYTHING-BUT-ORDINARY WHODUNIT? • Welcome to the West Heart Club. Where the drinks are neat but behind closed doors . . . things can get messy. Where upright citizens are deemed downright boring. Where the only missing piece of the puzzle is you, dear reader.
A unique and irresistible murder mystery set at a remote hunting lodge where everyone is a suspect, including the erratic detective on the scene—a remarkable debut that gleefully upends the rules of the genre.
"A thoroughly original suspense novel that hops across elements of the genre—a diabolical locked-room mystery interspersed with a fascinating primer on the form—while always being tremendous fun to read."—Chris Pavone, best-selling author of Two Nights in Lisbon
An isolated hunt club. A raging storm. Three corpses, discovered within four days. A cast of monied, scheming, unfaithful characters.
When private detective Adam McAnnis joins an old college friend for the Bicentennial weekend at the exclusive West Heart club in upstate New York, he finds himself among a set of not-entirely-friendly strangers. Then the body of one of the members is found at the lake’s edge; hours later, a major storm hits. By the time power is restored on Sunday, two more people will be dead . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McDorman's wily debut breaks the fourth wall immediately, in a sign of the authorial shenanigans to come: "This murder mystery, like all murder mysteries, begins with the evocation of what the reader understands to be its atmosphere," goes the opening line. From there, McDorman introduces private detective Adam McAnnis, who's finagled an invitation to a weekend-long bicentennial celebration at the West Heart hunting club in Upstate New York, where his old college friend's family owns a cabin. After McDorman establishes his large cast (in part through a half-redacted list of dramatis personae), the plot speeds up with a suspicious drowning and the accidental shooting of West Heart president John Garmond. Looking to get to the bottom of both deaths, McAnnis interviews his fellow lodgers one by one. As the story unfolds, the omniscient narrator intrudes to offer up tangents on subjects including murder mystery genre rules ("The key is a sense of fair play—a reader must not feel cheated") and Agatha Christie's famous 1926 disappearance. While these peregrinations may not appeal to mystery fans who prefer a more direct route from crime to solution, McDorman ensures they never come at the expense of satisfying twists or shocks. For readers willing to try something a little different, this is quite the diversion.
Customer Reviews
Creative mystery
This was an excellent read. It’s a very different kind of mystery but one that is very well written, suspenseful and a lot of fun. Highly recommended.