West Heart Kill is a debut standalone mystery by Dann McDorman. Released 24th Oct 2023 by Knopf Doubleday on their Knopf imprint, it's 288 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. Paperback format due out from the same publisher in 3rd quarter 2024. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links.
This is a classic style closed-circle mystery with an isolated setting, a fun set of suspects, and an eccentric/somewhat unreliable/incomplete narration. It's set in 1976, and engages the reader from the first page. The author is especially adept at setting descriptions and dialogue and the prose flows very very well.
Readers should understand that the author tosses the fourth wall out of the train in the beginning and never really sees the need to pick it up again. The plot and mystery itself are cleverly constructed and well engineered.
It's not a book to read passively. Expect to be moderately bewildered the first 20% of the book. Once the reader finds the balance, however, it develops moderately well. There's a lot of style over substance with all sorts of literary tricks (broken fourth wall, a play as a narrative device inside the story, changing narrator halfway through, "why" instead of "who" for the mystery itself, and several others) felt like too much and made for uneven reading.
The author knows his business, but in this case, less would've been more. It's clever, but clearly openly aware of its own cleverness.
Three and a half stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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