{"id":1626,"date":"2024-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-31T22:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=1626"},"modified":"2025-05-03T17:14:56","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T05:14:56","slug":"west-heart-kill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2024\/01\/01\/west-heart-kill\/","title":{"rendered":"West Heart Kill"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dann McDorman<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Raven Books<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Otago Daily Times, 2024<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When you pick up a murder mystery, there are certain details you expect to find: a detective (professional or amateur depending on circumstance), a crime, suspects, clues, and at least one plot twist before the denouement. Indeed, isn\u2019t one of the pleasures of genre fiction that it follows a familiar formula? One that, if the writer is honourable, offers the reader a sporting chance to beat the investigator to the punch?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In West Heart Kill<\/em>, Dann McDorman not only plays by the rules, he shows the reader how the trick works in real time. At one level, the novel follows the accepted formula, including a death at the height of a storm that isolates the characters from the outside world, and a plot twist that turns the story on its head. The main protagonist is a down-at-heel private detective called Adam McAnnis, who has arranged for reasons best known to himself to be invited to a Fourth of July party on a private island owned by the West Heart Club. Also present are various members of the founding families, whose histories, relationships, and illicit interactions provide a variety of motives and opportunities for conflict. And once introduced, McAnnis must, like Chekov\u2019s gun, be deployed, the questions of who has hired him and why are as much a part of the mystery as the inevitable loss of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where McDorman parts with convention is in his relationship with his audience. The perspective not only veers from first to third person, the author repeatedly breaks the fourth wall to flattering our perspicacity and direct our thoughts on characters or events: \u201cYou sense that the author is caught between the demands of the rules of the genre\u2026and the demands of verisimilitude\u2026these preoccupations momentarily distract you from the story as it moves relentlessly towards the principal set piece\u2026\u201d The \u2018you\u2019 at times is addressed to the reader que<\/em> reader, at others to the reader as cast member (are we not, in the very act of reading, ourselves participants?), a bid both to involve us in and distract us from his prestidigitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The form, too, is fluid, with the grand reveal taking the form not of a novel but a play, and the narrative is interspersed with diversions into the genre’s history and conventions. The result is a little like being a guest at a Murder Mystery party: great fun to play if you are in the mood but a little disconcerting if you stumble across it unawares.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although not quite as original as the publicity might suggest (I first encountered this sort of metafictional mystery when I reviewed Benjamin Stevenson\u2019s much-hyped 2022 whodunnit Everybody in My Family Has Killed Somebody<\/em>, and Stevenson\u2019s endorsement heads the publisher\u2019s promo material), it is cleverly done and a great read for those that enjoy a good puzzle. If you prefer things tied up in a neat bow at the end or find such authorial game-playing frustratingly pretentious, you might want to look elsewhere.  You have been warned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dann McDorman Raven Books Otago Daily Times, 2024 When you pick up a murder mystery, there are certain details you expect to find: a detective (professional or amateur depending on circumstance), a crime, suspects, clues, and at least one plot twist before the denouement. Indeed, isn\u2019t one of the pleasures of genre fiction that it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[448,455,370,506,18],"class_list":["post-1626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-448","tag-dann-mcdorman","tag-fiction","tag-murder-mystery","tag-odt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1627,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626\/revisions\/1627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}