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A review by mwgerard
West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman
3.0
https://www.mwgerard.com/review-west-heart-kill/
The story centers around a July 4th weekend at a lake surrounded by cabins and cottages all belonging to one extended family. The protagonist, Adam, is a PI hired by someone at the family gathering who is afraid they are going to be murdered. What seems like a dysfunctional 1970s family spat turns into murder and isolation in the woods of Upstate New York. A massive storm comes in, taking away electricity, the bridge, phone lines, and a way out.
McDorman uses a cheeky style of inserting explanations about tropes — the closed circle, the unreliable narrator, the red herring — used by murder mysteries in the past. These winks are fun for the avid mystery reader like myself, but I do wonder if they would work for a relative newcomer.
The mystery itself is less satisfying that the journey of solving it, though that is so often the way in the genre, although this solution may have been one wink too many. Still, it is very possible to go in thinking of it as an enjoyable romp and expect nothing more. The ending is a bit of a let down amidst all the true cleverness of the previous 200 pages, though.
The story centers around a July 4th weekend at a lake surrounded by cabins and cottages all belonging to one extended family. The protagonist, Adam, is a PI hired by someone at the family gathering who is afraid they are going to be murdered. What seems like a dysfunctional 1970s family spat turns into murder and isolation in the woods of Upstate New York. A massive storm comes in, taking away electricity, the bridge, phone lines, and a way out.
McDorman uses a cheeky style of inserting explanations about tropes — the closed circle, the unreliable narrator, the red herring — used by murder mysteries in the past. These winks are fun for the avid mystery reader like myself, but I do wonder if they would work for a relative newcomer.
The mystery itself is less satisfying that the journey of solving it, though that is so often the way in the genre, although this solution may have been one wink too many. Still, it is very possible to go in thinking of it as an enjoyable romp and expect nothing more. The ending is a bit of a let down amidst all the true cleverness of the previous 200 pages, though.