The Mystery Writer
The Mystery Writer
By: Sulari Gentill
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2024]
[Fulfilled ‘Book with a brother and sister relationship’ prompt as part of Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge]
“Perhaps the dead are afraid to live as much as we are afraid to die.”
I think I would have liked this book better if I hadn’t read the summary first. I did enjoy the book, but the summary was misleading to me:
“…the police begin looking at her brother, Gus, as their prime suspect, and Theo does the unthinkable in order to protect him. But the writer has left a trail, a thread out of the labyrinth in the form of a story. Gus finds that thread and follows it, and in his attempt to save his sister he inadvertently threatens the foundations of the labyrinth itself. To protect the carefully constructed narrative, Theo Benton, and everyone looking for her, will have to die.”
This is what I thought the bulk of the book would be describing. For one, this is probably only the last 20% of the book. Theo doesn’t disappear until 75% in. Two, the ‘threatening of the foundations of the labyrinth’ seems like a bad thing in this summary, but if Theo is stuck in there, isn’t that actually a good thing? Three, thread makes it seem like a continuous series of clues you keep pulling on until you unravel it, but in actuality, the thread was one not-so-hidden clue found by Mac, not Gus.
I thought the majority of the book was going to be figuring out what Theo’s ‘unthinkable’ thing was and that she had left a manuscript behind with clues in it as to where she is or what’s going on. That was an intriguing concept to me.
But it’s not quite so complex.
Theo, an aspiring writer, gets dragged into a mess of murders after she gets involved with another writer who she finds murdered in his home just 24 hours after she had given her manuscript to him.
As others around her also get murdered, she is a suspect… and by association her lawyer brother as well.
She has to figure out who murdered her friend and why. Who can she can trust now that she and her brother are in danger.
Another aspect of this book is the interspersed snippets of chat room discussion on a conspiracy theory known as the Frankenstein Project which they believe is an experiment being conducted on people, dead and alive, by an organization called the Labyrinth .
Having read it now, I think that I’m grasping what the author was attempting to do here, but at the same time, I’m still a little confused about what I’m supposed to see as a conspiracy theory’s tendency to exaggerate and dramatize the truth versus what I’m supposed to see as a shocking revelation of what’s really going on.
The author leaves you on a bit of a cliffhanger, but as far as I know this was meant to be a stand alone novel. So the last couple paragraphs made me just sit there for a minute trying to figure out what I missed. (One thing I completely forgot about was the prologue.)
The idea of incorporating a conspiracy theory into a thriller is super interesting to me, especially considering the power they have to change people’s behavior or cause mistrust.
In the book it says, “If you need people to distrust the education system, or the media, or fast food, [such and such] would develop a conspiracy theory that would do it.”
That statement seems to imply that all conspiracy theories are untrue, and we should inherently trust everyone. That’s what makes conspiracy theories interesting. What truths are they tapping into? Knowing people are sinful and have a capability for evil it takes a lot of discernment to know what to trust. While many conspiracy theories are beyond ridiculous (birds, for instance) I think we also have to understand the power move it is to label a belief as a conspiracy theory to convince people to ignore any of the truths that may be found in it.
However, in this book, the conspiracy theory just felt bizarre and confusing when it could have been fleshed out more. It was hard to tell how important the author wanted it to be in the story.
Also the Primus character didn’t seem to fit in the way it was supposed to considering who the person was and what their warnings were saying.
I think this book would benefit from a rewritten summary or even better— spend more time on the last 20% because that’s where the action happened. This book had a lot of potential, and I did enjoy reading it, but as I sit down to write the review I’m realizing more and more the parts that ended up being unsatisfying. It didn’t go the direction I was expecting/wanting and there was too much anticipation of the action on the front end.
Plus we jump months and even years into the future in the last few chapters which was disappointing and definitely played into the need to suspend belief. I feel like the author focused and expanded on the wrong parts.
Towards the end there was some confusion for me about what was happening, but I read a digital advanced reader’s copy and I’m assuming not all the formatting was in place. I plan to check the physical copy if my library has one to see how it ended up being written. It was jumping back and forth between two characters/locations but it wasn’t clear and I had to reread several parts because I was confused why those characters were all of a sudden in the same place (they weren’t).
But again— hopefully this was fixed in the official published version!
Considering the author is Australian and lives in Australia, I thought the Kansas setting was an interesting choice. Kansas doesn’t have a whole lot to offer (although she did send me down a crazy rabbit hole regarding The Bloody Benders who may have had a connection to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s family). But I guess it is a good location if you want to incorporate some bizarre characters like the doomsday preppers with all their guns and bunkers and such.
Some reviewers mentioned that reading the book made you think all Americans run around with guns, but I didn’t think that at all. Maybe it’s because I’m from Iowa and guns are common but not everywhere? There are characters with guns, especially the preppers, but I don’t really think there were that many, if any, other characters with guns.
At one point a character comments that Americans respond to surprises by shooting, but that’s a well-known stereotype that I read more as humor than any actual attempt to label America, although even though not all Americans have guns, I would say that shooting at least with their words would probably be an accurate description of most. I also think readers are adept enough to understand that preppers don’t represent an entire country.
Even though we were in Kansas, Theo and Gus were Australians and we got to see Gentill’s roots show through: from Vegemite (which is to be spread sparingly over a thick layer of butter), to calling Americans emotional, the Tasmanian term for hippies being ‘ferals’ and how they called their parents ‘the ancients,’ to their eating of chicken parma (which I knew was a popular Australian dish because of Australian Survivor), it was kinda fun to see an Australian planted in Kansas.
Gentill had some good, interesting characters. I would probably agree with other reviewers that Theo was a bit boring, though, and I feel like she should have been more wary of one of the characters than she was, but considering what she ended up doing, I don’t know if it would have mattered anyway.
Recommendation
This one is hard to know how to recommend. I really did enjoy the book as I was reading it— I didn’t find it boring by any means, but overall it did feel unsatisfying for what I was expecting and what I feel the author could have done with the concept.
I think a lot of people will still like this book even with some of my qualms. Others may not think the reading was worth the convolution, or may not enjoy conspiracy theories.
I think I would still consider reading other Gentill books as many reviewers have said this book was different than her others.
[Content Advisory: 31 f-words, 2 s-words; one implied sex scene]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
This book was just published March 1, 2024. You can order a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.
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