I love dictionaries, mysteries, both cosy crime and literary fiction... and Susie Dent. But I did not love this book. I was intrigued to read this debut novel after the promising description but it failed to engage, even after re-reading the first few chapters to check I wasn't missing anything. Part of the problem was that it couldn't seem to decide what it was aiming for: either a cosy mystery or an intellectual puzzle. It fell down on both counts, as the characters felt dull, the writing cliché-ridden and lacklustre. Simply inserting random unusual dictionary words throughout the book served as a reminder of the author's (and the main characters') 'day job', but very little else. They grated rather than enhanced the narrative, particularly at the start of the chapters.

However, the most disappointing element was the slow and clunky plot. The puzzle element did not allow the reader to become involved or interested, as they were solved summarily and easily by the characters but with little flair. Without a well paced, engaging plot, what is the point?

Perhaps my expectations were too high for a first novel, the description and hype rather inflated. I really wanted to like this book, but it's not quite there for me. Hopefully the writer will be able to iron out some of the shortcomings in future attempts. I wish her luck in her latest venture.

Susies Dents debut novel takes the reader on a linguistic journey of mystery & Intrigue.
Set in Oxford, a group of lexicographers receive letters containing clues about a missing person, which they try to solve.

I'm sure this novel will sell well, due to it being written by a celebrity but Susie has used her vast professional knowledge & expertise in language, to write with ease & make it different to the normal celebrity publication.

It contains multiple POV's, great character development with gentle plot twists & has a great pace.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book & found it difficult to put down, although saying that I delayed reading the last few pages, as I just didn't want it to end!

If you like mysteries and words this is for you!

Thankyou to Netgalley for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Fans of Richard Osman and Robert Thorogood are sure to love this cosy mystery. The story follows Martha, a lexicographer who has moved back to Oxford after living in Berlin. Martha and her colleagues begin to receive mysterious letters which seem to relate to the mysterious disappearance of Martha’s sister years earlier. The story contains female friendships, strong female characters and some unusual vocabulary you would expect from Susie Dent! I absolutely loved this book and would recommend to any cosy crime fans!

ISO wanted to enjoy this book as I have the greatest respect for Susie Dent. Unfortunately I found it tough going, uninspiring and quite difficult to keep my attention. I usually read at night, but this one kept putting me to sleep. Very sad.

I’m sorry to say that I’m quite disappointed with this book and I think it will be difficult to explain why.
But I’ll try!
The generic trope of missing girl should have been dramatic and thrilling with the plot lines of cryptic letters and the unusual environment of the lexicography world.
But I feel the actual storyline stayed very basic.

The main character felt like a soulless ethereal entity, a vintage toff type who you absolutely couldn’t relate to.
The lexicography aspect was actually far too overwhelming. Needless insertions of random and unpronounceable words, the chapters starting with definitions of words unknown to me but seemingly made little sense to the chapter itself. All of the characters reflections and introspections seemed to be influenced by an odd word they would think of at the time.
It really was just too much.

The cryptic letters were nonsensical and unenjoyable to read.
Maybe you need a masters in language and history and literature to have any understanding or maybe I’m just stupid but this book just felt like it was trying too hard to be clever and almost cutesy at the same time.

It just lacked real substance as a storyline and twists all came far too late.
This is not a recommendation from me I’m afraid.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

What a fantastic mystery. This book was brilliant. A lot better than the usual media persons book. I learnt so much but it was not preachy.
I would love this to be the start of a series of books..
The mysterious disappearance of Charlie, rumours and the twists will keep you reading late in to the night.

I’m sorry this just wasn’t my cup of tea. Far too many words that only a lexicographer would use and know the meaning of. Premise sounded good but was far too slow and not enough suspense. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the chance to review it.

What a fabulous new re-working of the thriller concept – a missing person mystery set in a lexicographical publishing house. With cryptic messages, word puzzles, regular references to the world’s literary greats and the creation of two intriguing female characters, ‘Guilty by Definition’ has much to offer!
The leading female character is lexicographer Martha Thornhill who returns to a UK publishing position after several years spent abroad. She has never recovered from the disappearance, almost fifteen years earlier of her much-admired older sister Charlie, so when an anonymous letter holding a series of oblique clues arrives at her new place of work, Martha and her fellow editors set out to investigate. That in the course of this amateur investigation, we learn much more about the complex sisterly relationship, the motives of the ancillary characters, and the English language ourselves, is a given – and Susie Dent takes us on genuinely enjoyable, brilliantly described journey. Highly recommended, I hope this unique thriller gains as many readers as possible. I wish to thank Bonnier Books UK, Zaffre and NetGalley for the e-ARC I was gifted in exchange for an honest review.

I was always going to be biased on this one, Susie Dent was my hero growing up, I wanted to be everything she was.

Not at all shocked to read this and love it, seeing how brilliant she has always been with words! This is everything I wanted it to be.

I must admit that I’m really disappointed by this! The overall reviews are fantastic so I’m not sure if it’s maybe just me, but I found this so slow and arduous to get through!

The story is a whodunnit/mystery with a difference - lots of words you’ll need to look up or else are shoe-horned in with the definition - either way I felt like I’d forgotten what was going on by the time we got back to the plot. Thankfully I was reading on my kindle which could give me definitions of words quickly but it still halted the flow several times.

The plot centres around Martha - a woman in her early 30s who has fairly recently returned to live in her hometown of Oxford after living in Berlin. She is working as a dictionary editor at the offices where her older sister Charlie briefly worked before going missing 10 years ago - and still no one knows what happened to her.

One day a mysterious letter arrives at the dictionary from someone known as Chorus - it is a baffling and long letter that makes no sense to the reader but the dictionary team have it worked out in a surprisingly short time. Next, people connected to Charlie start receiving postcards with puzzling messages on them.

Now Martha and her team throw any semblance of doing any work aside for what feels like weeks or months and concentrate on solving the mystery of Charlie’s disappearance and Chorus’s lengthy and impossible riddles (which they repeatedly solve quickly without too much trouble).

I love a good mystery and whodunnit but this just didn’t do it for me- it was slow, the characters unappealing except for Zoe, and Alex was ok, and I felt like I wasn’t too bothered what had happened to Charlie by the end. Disappointing!

I was excited to receive an arc of the debut novel by the popular lexicographer and tv presenter Susie Dent. However, although I liked the premise, the narrative was slow and the setting of Oxford has been over explored.

This is a DNF for me. Whilst it is very well written I have found it a little slow going and I struggled to comprehend the story line! I may pick this up again in future

Susie Dent is known to may as a consultant on Countdown and to a lesser number as editor of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Her debut novel centres around the disappearance of a young woman years ago. The missing woman's sister is now a team leader on the clarendon English Dictionary and a series of anonymous letters begin to arrive, with cryptic clues about the disappearance. The group of lexicographers begins to solve the puzzle. Its a good detective story and if you love unusual words, crossword puzzles and are interested in etymology and literary allusions you will love this book.. I couldn't put it down - its brilliant!

As an ex teacher I am very conscious of the use of words. Words fascinate me, and this book had so much to 'teach' me. It's a mystery bound up in the clever use of the surroundings, and the story of Martha. It took concentration to read, but I found it a very enjoyable story. Thanks for the chance to read and review the book.

Susie Dent is probably the country's most famous lexicographer and I was excited to read her debut novel.
It is set in the intellectual capital of the UK - Oxford and revolves around the team at the Clarendon English Dictionary, and a disappearance that hasn't been solved in over a decade.
It took me a long time to get into the story, mostly I think because I didn't really care very much about the main character Martha. Her sister Charlie had just vanished a long time before, and when Martha returns to Oxford to try and lay some ghosts to rest, everything ends up coming back to haunt her anyway.
I did really like the team at the CED and felt that their characters were very well drawn. Susie's word knowledge is exemplary but sometimes it felt a little forced including what a word meant in a certain description at so many different points in the book. I'm an English teacher, so words and meanings are really important to me but maybe it was just a little too often and stopped the flow of the plot.
Having said all that, the mystery was interesting and the resolution was relatively satisfying - no spoilers!

Overall, a 3.5 rounded up to a 4.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced released copy in exchange for an honest review.

ADVANCED REVIEW COPY - NETGALLEY

Suzy Dent and I have been involved for over thirty years...well, she's oblivious to it but as part of the Countdown team she's been a regular afternoon presence in various lounges and sitting rooms throughout that time...we also live in relative proximity in Oxfordshire I believe...she uses her knowledge of Oxford to great effect in this, her first published work of fiction.

As the mistress of dictionary corner she has spent decades sharing her wisdom and knowledge of the English language, words and their derivation as a staple of the ever entertaining programme.

Her word-smithery is put to good effect here from the opening chapter which introduces us to a cast of oddballs, drawn together by their common love of language as Editors of the fictional "Clarendon English Dictionary". My advanced review copy is downloaded to my Kindle, Ms Dent has managed to beat the inbuilt dictionary more than once (an early favourite for me is Chapter Four's "conjobble", which a character describes as being an opportunity to "eat,drink and talk" - that's one I'll be coming back to on many pub nights to come).

A tenth of the way in and we have the outline of the mystery that is to come - it's been an entertaining start , though part of me thinks that the all too clever wordplay is going to start clogging the narrative - no one likes a show off or a know-it-all I was taught...Suzy could annoy some readers by rubbing their noses into their general ignorance - though I'm sure she could equally enrapture others who are beguiled by the challenge of the unknown and new...At this point I'm hoping that the story will take over and distract me from the cleverness - which I can then return to at my leisure perhaps (or cast asunder in favour perhaps of a "less is more" approach next time?

Well what do I know, three days later and I've finished the book...yes, Suzy is clever with words and has a vocabulary way bigger than mine but that's my problem, not hers...the story did take over and what an excellent read it was. There are twists and turns to the very end, and there is an end with everything neat and tidy.

Excellent debut, let's hope it's the first of many.

This had me up all night! I was on the edge of my seat from start to finish, a fantastic plot and perfectly executed! Will definitely read more from this author! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC

I was never not going to read a crime novel by Susie Dent and this didn’t disappoint. You get exactly what you are hoping for; a well-plotted, well-delivered murder mystery dressed in detail about language, words, definitions, dictionaries and history. Looking forward to the next one already.

What a great debut loved the mystery/crime elements it has secrets puzzles and more I don’t what to give to much spoilers loved the characters 4 stars thank you NetGalley and Bonnier Books UK for the arc

What a great read this was! Susie Dent who is known for her love of words (and one of the few remaining good accounts on twitter/x) has delivered a mystery with puzzles, history, wit, words, words, more words and a bit of Shakespeare.

We meet Martha who is a senior editor is a dictionary publishing house. Her sister disappeared 10 years ago. At her new job, the staff begin to receive cryptic postcards and messages which they soon realise are related to the mystery of her disappearance.

Flawed characters, unlikeable characters and old school policemen feature in this Agatha-esque story.

I'm clearly not as good with words as Susie! Have a dictionary to hand