Books, I absolutely adore a good book! This will come as no surprise to any of you who are reading this, after all here you are on my book blog, what sort of ridiculous woman would have a blog dedicated to books if she didn’t like them? I’m a bit of an eclectic reader, I love crime fiction, a good detective story will keep me hooked, I’ll stay up until the early hours of the morning to finish a thriller and over the last year I’ve delved back into the brilliant world of YA, and found myself immersed in a fantastical world where time is money, or the gifted 1% rule the country and the remaining 99% are forced into slavery. I’ve read books featuring science, and friendship and love.
However sometimes books can become a little samey – This isn’t a criticism, perhaps it’s because I read a lot a crime fiction and there’s only so many different ways you can murder a person and follow a detective as they track down a killer. A fantastic cast of characters will always keep me intrigued, but every now and then you find a book that does something a little bit differently, that takes a chance and tells a story in a different way, it might not always work but when it does it makes you sit back and say wow!
I’m going to briefly talk about two books in particular that did this for me. These two books just happen to be by the same author, I’m not claiming these are the only, or even the first books to employ these techniques but the books are the first time I’ve read them, or at least that I remember!
First up – Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz! I read this when it was first released in 2016. So what makes this different from your standard murder mystery book? Well the story begins in the home of Susan Ryeland, an editor, as she begins to read one of her authors latest manuscripts. Yes Magpie Murders is actually the latest Atticus Pünd novel by Alan Conway. That’s right Magpie Murders is actually a book within a book. We get most of an Agatha Christie style murder mystery before rejoining Susan in her Crouch End flat and continue her story.
I’m sure this is something that absolutely will not work for everybody but for me it was a great way to slightly switch up a murder mystery. I really enjoyed the story as a whole but also the book within the book. The hardback is beautifully laid out, with a different type face for Alan Conway’s book within the book and I loved it.
The second book I’m mentioning in this post is Anthony Horowitz’s 2017 release, The Word Is Murder. This is another murder mystery novel, but Anthony mixes it up a little by including himself as a main character alongside the ex-detective Hawthorn. Narrating the book himself he tells the story of an author approached by a detective to write a book who finds himself sucked into the investigation as it begins to run away from him.
It’s another device that won’t be for everyone, and I certainly wouldn’t want every crime novel I read to be written in this way but for the occasional change I really liked it!
So my question for all of you is do you like it when a novel switches it up from the norm every now and then? Are there any books you love that do something a little differently? Let me know in the comments below!
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