The Other Half By Charlotte Vassell
My rating: ****
Genre: Murder mystery
Tags: Drug use, Murder, Dysfunctional relationships, Romance
A birthday party being black-tie gives you a sense of a classy affaire, but the fact that Rupert Beauchamp is holding it at a McDonald’s gives a different twist. His girlfriend being found murdered the following morning brings this back to earth.
This is a murder mystery with a lot of references to the class system, and a cast of characters that are mostly unpleasant and I had no connection to, but you aren’t meant to!
Detective Caius Beauchamp (no relation to Rupert!) is the detective investigating the case, and so gets dragged a little into this world.
Reading a book where characters do a lot of sneering and belittling of each other is never pleasant, but as I mentioned, you’re not meant to like most of these characters. The cast of characters are all quite entangled, as they would be if you have a big group of friends for years. I hadn’t predicted the solution, so I enjoyed when that was revealed!
This is one of those books that I think if you know you’re only going to like a couple of the characters, then you worry on their behalf that they’re going to be guilty of something along the way, so that was a good way of ensuring I was gripped by the story!
I was given this book in exchange for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley, Faber and Faber, and Charlotte Vassell!