This debut novel by Alex Parvesi, a mathematician as well as writer, takes the structure of the typical murder-mystery genre as its subject and turns this into a series of clues that are meant to solve a crime.
Basically, the story is about an editor at a press dedicated to publishing books in the crime genre, chasing down a famous author who lives on a remote Greek isle with the aim of both seeking his permission to publish a series of short stories he wrote over 20 years ago that prove his thesis about the structure of almost envy murder-mystery (as he prefers to call them) ever written, as well as write an erudite introduction explaining his theories. The original book was called The White Murders.
This is the frame narrative for what then becomes a series of alternating chapters where the reader is given the seven short stories the author wrote all those years ago (and which comprise the original book), interspersed with conversations between him and his new publisher. Yet, in each story, there are a series of irregularities, which when the publisher points these out, the author either dismisses or explains away abruptly. When the publisher questions him re the title, which also conjures up an actual brutal murder of a young woman named White that occurred in England decades ago, and the writer dismisses any relationship as mere coincidence, she begins to question his response, not just to this, but to all her queries…
I enjoyed this slow burn of a novel. Drawing on the tropes of the murder/mystery/crime genre, it explores it in a variety of homages – the gumshoe PI, the femme fatale, the bully cop, the dogged investigator and obvious and not so obvious suspects and victims. It bears echoes of Agatha Christie, Sophie Hannah, Anthony Horowitz’s recent works and other writers of British noir and crime. While the individual stories were in themselves quite good, the conversation chapters between were often a bit lacklustre. The book grows a bit repetitive and I was beginning to wonder where it was heading… then comes the ending. The twists towards the end not only bring the book together, but result in a very satisfying conclusion to a work that didn’t, for a while, appear to be going anywhere meaningful.
Whereas for a while I thought I might not enjoy this book as much
as I hoped, the ending made the journey, which was clever and demonstrates a
real appreciation of the genre, very worthwhile.
This is the second book I have read recently with “seven” in the title, the other being the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo which I enjoyed very much. Turton’s book, which was originally entitled The Seven and a Half Deaths etc (now that’s an eye-grabber) is a very different proposition. Essentially a murder mystery, it is also so much more. It’s also an existential exploration of what it means to be human – different kinds – and the ways in which we suffer for our sins, seek redemption, and/or must face the consequences of our actions. The setting is a decaying manor house, Blackheath, in the English countryside. The period appears to be the 1920s or something akin to that. A a group of guests have gathered to celebrate or be part of a memorial of a gruesome death that occurred many years earlier, and which has affected the Hardcastle family ever since. When one of the guests, a man we think is called Aiden (reading the book will explain why we only “think”), learns that the hosts’ daughter, Evelyn, is to be murdered that night and he has to uncover the identity of the culprit or else remain trapped in the manor house, reliving the same day over forever, you wonder what on earth is going on.
the BBC TV series, Poirot, starring David Suchet and having committed the literary cardinal sin of never reading one of Agatha Christie’s books featuring the Belgian detective (though I have read others), I thought I should give Sophie Hannah’s wonderfully titled novel, with the simply gorgeous art deco cover a whirl.
f Robotham’s works, I said they should come with a health warning as they render the reader unable to sleep. I want to correct that statement and instead recommend they be issued as a cure for narcolepsy, because I defy anyone to try and sleep while reading his latest work, Life or Death, because I sure as hell could not.
