Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.
Six friends gather at a country house to celebrate a birthday, they decide to play a parlour game to while away the evening. One where each guest writes a short story with one of their fellows as the murderer and another as the victim.
What could possibly go wrong? Almost everything as it turns out. Long held secrets and grudges come sneaking out into the light and soon enough the fictional murders start to look worryingly like the motive for one committed in real life.
The above could be the set up for a ‘cosy’ crime story as the genre enjoys something close to a second golden age. In the hands of Alex Pavesi, it is an entirely different, and much stranger animal.
Why make do with one unreliable narrator when you can have, literally, an entire house full. Pavesi piles gruesome fantasies on top of real-life incidents to leave his readers both baffled and intrigued. Putting together the clues to reach a solution is less enjoyable than getting delightfully lost in a maze that springs a fresh surprise with each wrong turn.
Pavesi shows an intimate understanding of the founding conventions of the crime genre that allows him to have a high old time subverting each one in turn. His capacity for invention and black comedy is limitless as is a talent for misdirection worthy of any of the greats of the golden age.
This is one of the smartest and most original crime novels of the year and maybe of the next few years. It is also an impressive calling card for an emerging major talent.
