This novel is great fun, happy to lampoon the industry gently and with love, approaching its main character's anxieties, insecurities, and quirks with both affection and clarity.

A 40-something singleton, Jane's best and closest friend was her mother, who's long since dead. She's struggling to get her agent or editor to reply to her emails, and despite a generally well-received series of novels fears that her time as a working author might soon be over. But she's going to give it one more shot, and she screws up her courage to attend a literary festival, Killer Lines. Here, Jane hopes she can network, promote her books, and hopefully track down both agent and editor. Tragedy ensues, both for the people at the festival and (perhaps) Jane's career when early on the first full day of the conference she stumbles across the murdered body of said agent, stabbed to death with the festival's grand prize, a dagger. (A nod to the CWA's Dagger Awards.)

Hall/Nevin does a wonderful job of conveying early on something of the horror of the industry—the burdens and anxieties and financial securities of it all—as well as the horror of attending a festival solo, as a neurodivergent person, or just a shy middle-aged woman. I cringed. I felt seen. It reminded me I really should try to attend conferences/festivals more....

As the discoverer of the body, Jane is immediately in the frame, and there's a real risk that with her agent now dead she'll definitely be jettisoned from the ailing agency firm, if it remains at all. She abandons ship and is on the train back home until a chance encounter with the agency's intern, who turns out to be a big fan of her detective and encourages her to think that maybe, just maybe, she might have a better shot at solving the murder than the police. After all, she's written so many brilliant detective stories already? And who doesn't like to imagine they could give this sort of work a go?

The pair return and are joined by a young and much-lauded debut author to conduct their investigation, making a pleasingly sympathetic trio of investigators. Although broad, the cast of characters/suspects is ultimately well balanced. The BookToker, for example, is drawn straight from real life and discussions about alternative publishing careers. Hall/Nevin provides real differentiation between characters occupying familiar roles: the brash American counterpart, the young unpaid intern, the millennial who’s sure she knows everything and does everything and could do her boss’s job 10 times better if she only got the chance. However, editor Frankie’s presence felt uneven. She appears before she’s strictly relevant as a voice, which generates suspicion that (may or) may not have been warranted.

Hall/Nevin introduces a number of characters with tangled personal relationships prior to their work involvement with each other, going back to childhood. This serves as a useful confounding factor. Is the motive from the here-and-now of the industry, or something much deeper and more personal? It also conveniently allows the amateur detectives and the official police to hare off down different tracks. As always with unofficial detective stories, the police seem entirely indifferent to some key elements of the case, in particular the types of emotional motives that the literary industry might produce. Who would kill over a book, the official police wonder to themselves? Lots of people, think all of the festival attendees.

There are some wonderful moments of humour throughout. I love that "bum trouble" makes an appearance as a ruse, like in children's detective stories featuring Montgomery Bonbon (which I'm currently reading to my daughter). I also love the multiple references to Jonathan Creek. It speaks to me as someone approaching 40 for whom Jonathan Creek was a formative telly watch.

Impressively, it is more successful, I think, than the similar Anthony Horowitz novel, A Line to Kill (2021), where Anthony and his private detective colleague, Daniel Hawthorne, are promoting their books at a book festival and everything goes horribly awry, leaving them with a murder to solve. There is something fresh and funny here, and I am really looking forward to reading whatever comes next for Jane and her newfound friends!

This book combined two of my favourite things: mysteries and books! I loved that it was set at a book festival and we got a glimpse of life in the publishing world - although I do hope it’s not as literally cut-throat in real life! Jane, our main character, really grew on me over the course of the book, and I enjoyed watching all the friendships she built. There was humour throughout, and I liked all the Britishisms scattered throughout the book. I found this a really fun read - a great cosy whodunnit!
I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

As someone who enjoys crime novels and loves a literary festival, this book felt like it was written just for me. Add in that I am also a ‘Plain Jane’ and of course I needed to know more about my namesake.
As we arrive at the Killer Lines Crime Festival in the quaint town of Hoslewit, we meet some of the biggest names in crime writing. Among them is Jane Hepburn, an author whose books haven't yet made a splash. But Jane is determined that this year will be different. She wants to use the festival to make the right connections, convinced this will help her become a best-selling author.
When Jane’s agent is killed, she remains undeterred. As a writer of detective novels, she decides she has the skills to solve the murder herself. Jane is convinced that cracking this case will not only bring justice but also give her writing career the boost it needs.
There is much to enjoy in this book, but I hope that none of the literary festivals I have attended have similar disturbing events lurking in the background!
I loved Jane. Her timidity and self-doubt resonated with me as I think it is not only our name we have in common. Watching Jane's confidence blossom throughout the book was a joy. Initially, her surprise at the changes in her life was touching, and it was heart-warming to see her sheer joy as she realised how much she had changed and grown in just a few short days. I thoroughly enjoyed the insights into Jane’s thoughts. Her mother looms large in her mind, often serving as a guiding voice for her decisions. Jane’s candid and occasionally uncharitable opinions about certain characters and crime fiction genres were particularly delightful, adding a touch of humour that made me chuckle.
The cast of secondary characters is well-crafted. Jane's new allies, Daniel and Natasha – those pesky kids – make great sidekicks. While this is truly Jane's story, their mutual support helps each of them grow in self-confidence.
There is a plethora of suspects from the literary world suspected of the murder of Carrie Marks. They say, " many a true word is spoken in jest" but is the world of publishing really so cut-throat? I hope not, but in this book, it certainly makes for an entertaining read. With numerous red herrings, I found myself constantly changing my mind about who the culprit was as new clues and alibis were revealed.
Overall, this is a delightful murder mystery. It will have you laughing out loud at times and will bring a lump to your throat with its poignant moments. The characters are fantastic, and you will be guessing until the very end as to ‘whodunnit’. It's the perfect book to take along to your next literary festival.
I hope this isn’t the last we have seen of Jane.

A Novel Murder falls into the amateur detective sub-genre of crime fiction: set at a literary festival where the protagonist Jane Hepburn (an ignored writer) and her newly acquired friends (a young publishing intern and a soon-to-be-published hotshot author) investigate an out-of-hours death in the festival bookshop and try to work out which of the assembled writers, agents, publishers, or other might be responsible for a literary agent’s murder.
The author (from a publishing background) follows in the footsteps of (amongst others) Val McDermid, Isaac Asimov and most recently Anthony Horowitz in the book festival setting, but unlike the latter doesn’t go for a meta approach of dropping in real authors or publishers, instead going for an environment that suits the plot and while it’s pretty obvious which particular festival this is based on, it may have some who have attended such events spotting a lot of elements and events that ‘don’t really work like that’ (Some elements of which would be heading to spoiler territory so I’ll not go into detail).
I thought from the blurb this would be a bit more biting or inside reveals/ winks for those familiar with festivals (said blurbs including ‘eviscerating portrait of modern publishing’, ‘a must-read for anyone who's ever attended/fancied attending a crime fiction festival’ and ‘set at an unsettlingly familiar crime writing festival’) and that was what particularly drew me to request it. I found it more cozy than ‘biting’ or ‘eviscerating’ as the authors quoted did, but other readers’ mileage may vary.

The author has clearly been to her fair share of crime festivals! Including one starting with H... this book opened in a highly entertaining fashion and the observations of the industry and its practitioners is spot on. The author / detective is a lovely character and I hope we hear more from her. However the crime itself lacked pace and suspense, and therefore the novel worked more for me as satire, then as crime.