Stevyn Colgan

To start my review, I'm going to completely ignore the story and focus on the writing itself - from about half way down the first page, I really knew I was going to enjoy reading this book. It usually takes a little while to judge this but the writing in the book was a pleasure to read from the start. I've read a number of Stevyn's non-fiction books before and this had the same clear style that draws you in, I'm not sure what exactly it is about his writing but it works for me and I'm looking forward to his next book just for this!

The story itself was good fun with situations that reminded me a little of PG Wodehouse and characters that reminded me of Tom Sharpe. There were a few good laughs in there, in amongst a lot of hints that had me trying to guess who the killer was up until the reveal - this, I guess, is the idea with any good whodunnit.

I really got the feeling of authenticity with some of the descriptions of careful, methodical detective work - I guess an ex police officer would have a better insight into this than most. In addition to this, Stevyn's wide range of knowledge also comes across throughout the book - don't be surprised to learn a few things by the end.

You can tell Stevyn really had fun with the character names and I can only hope Rula Lenska checks some of the names with him before recording the audiobook version of A Murder to Die For! One name actually kept niggling away at me because I can think of quite a few different ways to pronounce it - how would you pronounce Tradescant?

This book literally states the rules a whodunnit should follow and then has a good go at smashing the lot of them - I'm not sure how some whodunnit purists (I'm sure they exist!) will take this and it could be a risky strategy but it didn't reduce my enjoyment of the book.

I'm generally pretty stingy with my ratings and only give five stars to something that really stands out as a classic - I'm not sure I would call this a classic but it was such good fun to read that I can't really not give it the full five stars!

If I had to say anything negative about this book, it might just be to suggest that the expression "I thought that only happened in movies", or sentences along those lines, were used a few too many times.… (altro)