This is an interesting book - a murder mystery novel spliced with bits of history, anecdotes and stories from the history of the murder mystery genre. It breaks a lot of the 'rules' that the genre is allegedly supposed to follow.

The basic plot is a pretty familiar one - a group of people gather at a location and the bodies pile up as they end up stranded and cut off from the rest of the world. There's a whole heap of potential motives for the various murders - or are they murders? - not least because the cast are all having affairs with each other.

So how does it break the rules? A lot of this is in the way the story is narrated. We begin by being basically addressed directly by the author (you will be thinking... etc). But the perspective we are largely given comes from Adam McAnnis, a private investigator who inexplicably has been invited to join the group for a hunting weekend.

But then this changes quite abruptly. Partway through the narration changes to that of an unknown character, who is now describing events and other people, including McAnnis, through a new set of eyes. And, without giving away the ending, we don't get the stereotypical unveiling of the truth of the murders.

The book is impressive because it manages to create a genuinely interesting and readable mystery of its own while splicing in general observations of the genre and historical references to previous works. I liked the fact that the author refused to end in a way that's expected.

The style reminded me of the Benjamin Stevenson book, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, which I also really enjoyed. It has the same way of addressing the reader that makes us feel we are 'in on' something, and gives us an affinity with the narrator in a way that somehow makes us more involved with the story. It feels like a refreshing way of writing a whodunnit - although no doubt the author would point us in many directions to show that this isn't in fact the case.

This is so weird I couldn't help falling in love with it. I can't describe it because I think any description will be highly personal.
Let's say it's something-dunit, entertaining even if a bit disjointed at times
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I loved this Mad Men-adjacent thriller - particularly how clever it was in poking fun at the conventions of the genre. Highly entertaining and kept me guessing until the end!

I really struggled with this one! I think it would be much easier to read the actual book instead of the ebook version. There are so many characters and with a physical book, it would be much easier to refer back to the character list.

There was a lot to enjoy in this novel - a good mystery, lots of intrigue, a unique structure and writing style, and loads of information and history of the crime writing genre. I would have given four stars but the end didn't sit well with me. That's a personal thing, other people might love it. Definitely worth giving this interesting novel a read!

A good thriller but some parts were hard to connect with, maybe trying to hard to be different although good for the author but not so good for the reader. I received this book from Bloomsbury and Netgalley for a review.

The setting of this book appealed to me- murder in an upper class country club. However it wasn't long before I realised that the style of this book was not for me. It was very clever adding the bits of how a whodunnit could be constructed but extremely annoying- I just want to engage with the characters & find out whodunnit! Sadly not for me. Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this book.

West Heart is an exclusive country enclave owned by a number of wealthy families. As they gatehr for a bicentennial celebration, issues come to the surface and the body count rises. Can the detective purportedly hired by one of the members solve the crime, or is this story about something different after all.
This is a high concept book. McDorman wants to explore the whole genre of detective fiction and its rich heritage and he shows great learning and understanding. However the story is too disconnects from the concept and it becomes a little too clever for this reader. in fact I found it rather smug after a promising start.

This was a gripping read. Huge thanks to the author and publisher for the chance to read the ARC, in exchange for an honest review.

The idea of bringing together a group of people to a club venue, on this occasion the privately owned West Heart, for more than one murder to happen is not new but the location is well created and the members present are a diverse bunch. If the story had been restricted to being a murder mystery in that setting it could have worked. The author however tries to bring the reader on board to assist in solving the crime. That could work too and certainly be different. On top of that, the author reviews comparable crime fiction and the reader is exposed to boring references to famous books and their authors. It is a boring and unwelcome distraction which spoils the basic story. Take all,that out and you could be left with a passable story. As it is I found it to be a long read with skipping over the extra stuff the only answer. I cannot recommend this as it stands.

I was a little disappointed with this book. It felt a bit clunky. The story and characters never really went anywhere.

Sorry this book is not for me. I like the authors of murder mysteries to set the plot and lead me to a conclusion of who did the deed through an intriguing storyline. This author found it necessary to explain throughout their own written work which I found frustrating.

West Heart Kill is the most frustrating read. The blurb makes it out to be far more than it is. Essentially the plot involves a series of murders and deaths at an exclusive country club in the States in the 70s, however overlaid are interruptions from an unknown commenter on the various thriller/mystery novel styles being used by the author. This evolves into mini lectures on the whole mystery novel style and its history. It’s interesting but distracting and doesn’t help the flow of the novel. I found it hard to really care about the characters and the plot as it was so broken up, particularly as the narrative switches between first and third narrative as well. It all feels like a rather over clever mess, meta would be kind. The ending is ridiculous and extremely frustrating. I enjoyed parts by it really didn’t add up to and enjoyable reading experience.

A very unusual book which I didn't enjoy very much. I found the characters shallow and the ending was disappointing. I really couldn't get into this one at all. My thanks to netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.

It's the Bicentennial weekend at the prestigious West Heart Hunting Club, an exclusive enclave of the rich and privileged in upstate New York. Among them is private detective Adam McAnnis, ostensibly there to reconnect with an old college friend, but really employed to act as the eyes and ears of a mysterious client with a vested interest in the club and its members. When one of the club members is found dead in questionable circumstances, McAnnis must attempt to unravel the tangled web of secrets which binds the families of West Heart before anyone else gets hurt.

Dann McDorman's debut novel is both a gleeful, knowing pastiche of the mystery novel and a celebration of a genre whose enduring popularity raises serious questions about society's voracious appetite for murder and mayhem.

West Heart Kill is a difficult book to review, because there are so many disparate elements which coalesce to form the whole - some of which are clever and extremely effective, while others didn't work for me at all.

As the blurb promises, the structure is certainly daring. From the opening chapter of this most meta of meta mysteries, the author brazenly breaks the fourth wall by directly addressing the reader, thus making it clear that this is no ordinary mystery novel. He switches between first person singular (McAnnis, the detective), third person (the omniscient narrator) and a Greek chorus-like first person plural which put me in mind of The Virgin Suicides' narrative style, but which I felt didn't ultimately pay off.

He pokes fun at the conventions of the old-fashioned mystery novel, such as the list of dramatis personae with key details redacted, because you obviously can't take the information the characters themselves (or the author, for that matter) present at face value. The characters are unabashed stock types - from the outsider detective with substance abuse issues to the alluring but dangerous femme fatale - and the author delights in layering trope upon trope: the misjudged death, obvious suspects turning out to be red herrings, the dying message, and, of course, the twist ending. We get the classic 'Poirot gathers the suspects and reviews the evidence' scene as well as the perfectly contrived setting of the remote location at which the killer - and their potential victims - are trapped. However, these tropes have endured for so long for a reason, and the plot is fun, entertaining and intriguing.

Of course McDorman doesn't follow the script entirely, and his deviations are at times clever and unexpected, such as the way he subverts the formula of multiple deaths leading to increasing pressure on detective. However, some of the other ways in which he decided to flip the script I found less effective. While I found the mystery insteresting enough, the constant breaking of the fourth wall - and the fact that the characters are such unoriginal archetypes - meant that I felt unusually detached from the characters, to the point where I found myself not really caring who the killer was or why they were killing. A third act twist necessitates an abrupt change in the story's format, which I found jarring, and the ending frustrated me. The narrator over signposts the action in spite of stating repeatedly that they assume the reader to be an avid mystery scholar, and there were times when I found myself wondering whether acknowledging the stock characters and formulaic plot is enough to make this book more entertaining than the mysteries which it is sending up.

Another departure from the traditional mystery novel was the fact that, as much as it is a story, West Heart Kill is also an essay on the history of the mystery genre and an exploration of the draw stories like this have had since Oedipus Rex. This is an ambitious choice and I would say it has mixed results; some of the interludes, in which the author regales the reader with stories of authors such as Agatha Christie and Dashiell Hammett, references to famous novels and musings on mystery tropes, have a direct bearing on the plot, while others are fairly redundant and just serve to slow down the pace of the story.

Nevertheless, I did enjoy West Heart Kill a lot; the structure and writing style is fresh and exciting, and a certain type of thriller reader will absolutely love it. I hope that it finds its audience.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing Plc for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book.

West Heart Kill is one part murder mystery novel, one part English literature lecture. The underlying plot takes place at the titular location, a 1970s hunting retreat attended by rich and utterly dislikeable families.

There were times at which the mystery itself intrigued me - unfortunately these moments were overshadowed by the constant lectures to the reader on the composition of historically significant murder mystery novels and authors - and as a result, what started off as an interesting take on the genre became a bit of a slog.

It didn't help that the ending didn't really make much sense. Other aspects that felt unnecessary were the last minute inclusion of a domestic violence plotline and a covert antisemite amongst the cast.

Overall this was an innovative read, but not necessarily a good one.

📕📕BOOK REVIEW📕📕
West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman

It was an unusual start to a rather unusual book. West Heart is an exclusive country club and it’s here that the “kill” takes place on the 4th of July. The author describes the process of creating a book, and then continues to explain the writing process throughout the book. I found it quite fascinating although I can understand others may not. It switches perspective quite often whilst also sometimes talking directly to the reader. I did find I needed to concentrate more than usual but I was totally engrossed in the Christie style plot and read it over two days.

Briefly, Detective Adam McAnnis has managed to get himself invited to what is actually a private hunting club as part of an investigation he is conducting but there is a murder at the club and that takes precedence. There are a lot of suspects so it isn’t going to be an easy job …

I quite enjoyed the explanation about the mystery genre and the history behind it. The plot was good with some great twists but I’ll let you decide if the plot was the main point of the book or if the opportunity the reader has to learn more about the genre and take part in the investigation was the important thing. This is definitely going to be a marmite read but I kind of enjoyed it so you might too. Give it a go. 3,5⭐️

Injecting some fresh blood in such a popular and codified genre is not an easy task. But West Heart Kill does that with a twist in the style.

What's not new?

You heard all of this before. Rich families on vacation. A club house surrounded by acres of woods and hunting grounds. We are in the US, so firearms are widely available. The families are rich, but some are doing less well than others. Whatever their financial status, they keep each other entertained, mostly by cheating their own spouses with someone else's. And by drinking. Oh, and the occasional joint.

Sounds familiar. I agree, nothing new here. The setup is a classic. You put some bored people in an isolated place, you give them some history so it is easy to believe in any motive. You scatter potential murder weapons all over, so it is easy to provide the means. You allow enough freedom of movement and enough space to provide opportunity. That's all you need for a good murder mystery.

But in this day and age that's not enough. All these elements are necessary for a murder mystery to work, but not to stand out. But there is more in West Heart Kill.

What's new?

The first part of the book is written in second person. Yes, you read it right (see what I've done?). The second person is probably the least used perspective in all genres. And understandably so.

It is difficult to set up scenes when all you can do is addressing the reader. There is a big risk of becoming directive or even patronising. But here it is done to the right effect.

The reader is acknowledged since the very start . The author, because it cannot be anybody else addressing the reader in such way, speaks directly to the reader who is assumed to be someone keen on murder mysteries. The author directs the reader's vision to certain particulars, introduces the characters and the time. Effectively, this method allows the author to tell rather than show. However, this does not detract from the quality of the style. The reader is completely immersed into the scene and both the setting and the characters are three dimensional.

The point of view shifts throughout the novel. At some point, we move inside the head of the sleuth. A risky move, as the author acknowledges, because we have access to his thoughts - and so where does the tension come from? In fact, that perspective is not held for too long. But rather than moving back to omniscent narrator, We is used. First person plural is highly disorienting. Who is speaking? Who is this We? Does that mean there are others not considered to be among Us? Is the killer among Us? That was a bold choice.

The essays

What's more is that the author allows himself to digress for entire chapters (which are not that long) on topics vaguely related to murder mysteries. During these digressions, the story halts and a little essay is presented on a specific aspect of the murder mystery genre.

There is a digression on the Locked Room type of mystery, where a body is found killed in a room shut from inside with no other escape routes. There is one on the rules that different authors came up over time on how to craft the perfect (crime) novel.

These little essays are filled with anedoctes and quotes.

These digressions are a gamble for the author. They risk stopping the flow of the story and alienate the reader who just wants to see what will happen. But they provide a novelty to a potentially standard kind of novel. The topics of these essays are relevant to what the characters say and do, so they don't appear out of the blue, and any reader can indulge in a little side track. Plus, if you are interested not only in reading but also in the craft of writing, these essays are a real pleasure.

Final comments

I read West Heart Kill because of the marketing quote from Stuart Turton, probably my favourite author with both the 7 and 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Water. This time the quote worked well, and I think I will trust Stuart Turton in the future.

West Heart Kill is murder mystery that is highly conscious of the tradition it comes from. It carries the weight of the history of the genre right before our eyes, with no fear nor regret. In doing so, it takes two gambles, one on point of view, the other on non-fiction digressions. Both do no detract at all from what is an enjoyable mystery. In fact, they make the novel standout from the crowd. The gambles have paid out.

Not for me … and unfortunately I gave up about 20% of the way through. Written in a different style I just couldn’t connect with the characters or story line.

I’m thoroughly confused if I enjoyed West Heart Kill. I enjoyed it up until a certain point/twist and then lost all interest as losing Adam felt unnecessary and the structure of the story seemed to unravel. West Point Kill is definitely a unique book but it throw the kitchen sink at you, there was too much information to absorb and mean anything to the reader.

Thank you to NetGalley for the preview copy.