Murder Your Darlings

Fatal Turn At Idyllic Villa.....
A Francis Meadowes mystery. Francis, a crime writer and sometime amateur sleuth, is participating in a writers retreat - teaching creative writing - at an idyllic Italian Villa. Mystery and murder tend to track him down and when events take a fatal turn at the Villa he reluctantly dons his sleuthing cap once again. A perfectly penned tale with a colourful cast of credible characters, taut plotting and a likeable protagonist in Francis. The authors travel writing expertise is once again evident in his descriptions of the stunning Umbrian countryside. This is the third book in this series (preceeded by 'Cruising To Murder' and 'The Festival Murders' - both highly recommended) but can happily be read as a standalone. Whilst I didn't want the book to end I just had to read in one joyous sitting. Highly recommended.

If you are looking for a foot-to-the-floor, non-stop action adventure, then this one isn’t for you. McCrum wonderfully conveys the glorious scenery and magical surroundings of this creative writing course by the steady accretion of details and description. His prose style is readable and accomplished, as Francis finds himself unwillingly sucked into the horrible murder. As in the first book, I found Francis to be a really attractive protagonist, and it was easy to empathise with his rather detached interest in everyone around him. Writers tend to be a bit vampiric about their own lives, always wondering if they can use what happens around them as material for another book… McCrum uses this side of Francis’ character to very good effect. I thought the crafting of the whodunit was also exceptionally well done – there were a raft of suspects, most with plausible reasons why they should want the victim done away with. But I couldn’t work out who was the murderer until the denouement, though flipping back, the clues were clearly there. Nicely done – and not always the case in cosy mysteries.

Francis’ own involvement was both bizarre and yet believable – and I very much liked the fact we weren’t allowed to forget that someone had died. Particularly with the second death, there was a real sense of shock and loss at the wicked waste of life, which not only upped the stakes, but made it matter that the perpetrator was caught. Overall, this was a classy effort and I shall certainly be following these mysteries and reading more. Highly recommended. The ebook arc copy of Murder Your Darlings was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest opinion of the book.
9/10