Review: Murder, mayhem, authors, egos ...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 12, 2013
A Novel Way To Dieis a light-hearted whodunit narrated by Lynda Wilcox's recurring protagonist, Verity Long. It's a novella, so shorter than others in the series (e.g.Organized MurderandStrictly Murder), making it an ideal starting point for anybody wishing to dip into Lynda's work for the first time.Verity accompanies her boss, an author she calls KD, to a writers' conference at an Elizabethan manor. One by one we meet other characters at the event and you can tell the author has a good grasp of the variety and flavour of people in the book publishing profession. There are one or two `in jokes' that people who move in publishing circles will certainly appreciate, but they're subtle and by no means make the book inaccessible to others.Then, just as I hoped, one of the attendees got bumped off in a sinister and parodical fashion. Verity's overbearing boss orders her to investigate.It's a `locked room' murder and the author teases the reader by continually eluding to how obvious the solution is, without giving it away until the very end.One of my favourite aspects of the book was the references to crime drama clichés and the way these were used to parody the genre.I've been meaning to read one of Lynda Wilcox's books for many months now, having heard great things about them. When I heard that there was one about authors, I accelerated it to the top of my ever-expanding to-be-read list, and I'm very glad that I did.