The Cracked Mirror – BooksPlease

Description from the publishers

FORGET WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW
THIS IS NOT THAT CRIME NOVEL

You know Penny Coyne. The little old lady who has solved multiple murders in her otherwise sleepy village, despite bumbling local police. A razor-sharp mind in a twinset and tweed.

You know Johnny Hawke. Hard-bitten LAPD homicide detective. Always in trouble with his captain, always losing partners, but always battling for the truth, whatever it takes.

Against all the odds, against the usual story, their worlds are about to collide. It starts with a dead writer and a mysterious wedding invitation. It will end with a rabbit hole that goes so deep, Johnny and Penny might come to question not just whodunnit, but whether they want to know the answer.

A cross-genre hybrid of Agatha Christie and Michael Connelly, The Cracked Mirror is the most imaginative and entertaining crime novel of the year, a genre-splicing rollercoaster with a poignantly emotional heart.

My thoughts:

I’ve read several books by Chris Brookmyre and those he’s co-written with his wife, Marisa Haetzman under the pseudonym Ambrose Parry and thoroughly enjoyed each one. The Cracked Mirror is not like any of his other books and it took me quite a while to get into it.

First of all there’s the title – as the publishers’ description alludes to, it’s not another version of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, but it is a cross-genre hybrid of Agatha Christie and Michael Connelly. I’ve read all of Christie’s crime fiction novels and none of Michael Connelly’s books, so I didn’t know quite what to expect. Maybe a mash-up of British/American crime fiction/thriller, and that is what it is, with plenty of twists and turns, complications and rollercoaster fast action chases, most of it unbelievable. It’s brutal, violent, with quite a bit of dark humour thrown in. It’s also tense and full of suspense.

At first I was happily reading about Penny Coyne – think a sort of Miss Marple like character, a Scottish elderly spinster with a successful record of solving murder mysteries in her home village. The book begins as a body is found in the confessional booth of the chapel of Saint Bride’s in Glen Cluthar, where Ms Penelope Coyle lives. And then I was suddenly confused when I came to read a completely different story about Johnny Hawke, an LAPD homicide detective, not bothered about sticking to the rules. He’s investigating an apparent suicide of a screen writer in LA. But, as their cases came together I settled into this bizarre book and it became a unified whole. It has a very clever plot (maybe just too clever for me) that kept me guessing right to the end.

My thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK and NetGalley for the ARC.

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

I’m featuring The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre, which was published yesterday. My full review will follow shortly.

Chapter One:

There was a body in the chapel of Saint Bride’s.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

‘Does your being an LAPD office help us here?’ ‘Not up the coast. And not while I’m under suspension. So I need you to understand that we might have to break a few rules. This could involve theft, fraud, trespass, or all three.’

Description

FORGET WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW
THIS IS NOT THAT CRIME NOVEL

You know Penny Coyne. The little old lady who has solved multiple murders in her otherwise sleepy village, despite bumbling local police. A razor-sharp mind in a twinset and tweed.

You know Johnny Hawke. Hard-bitten LAPD homicide detective. Always in trouble with his captain, always losing partners, but always battling for the truth, whatever it takes.

Against all the odds, against the usual story, their worlds are about to collide. It starts with a dead writer and a mysterious wedding invitation. It will end with a rabbit hole that goes so deep, Johnny and Penny might come to question not just whodunnit, but whether they want to know the answer.

A cross-genre hybrid of Agatha Christie and Michael Connelly, The Cracked Mirror is the most imaginative and entertaining crime novel of the year, a genre-splicing rollercoaster with a poignantly emotional heart.