Book Review: The Postscript Murders

Murder leaps off the page when crime novelists begin to turn up dead in this latest metafiction mystery from Elly Griffiths. When 90-year-old Peggy Smith dies of a seemingly natural death, her caretaker Natalka — who has been tasked with clearing out her apartment — notices an unusual number of crime novels written by different authors, all dedicated to Peggy. When she reports her suspicions to the police, they see nothing out of the ordinary, until a masked gunman breaks in to the apartment to steal a book, setting in motion a chain of events that proves there was more to the woman's death than it meets the eye. Embracing a style that's a mix of Agatha Christie and Anthony Horowitz, The Postscript Murders veers more on the cosy side, unfolding at a leisurely pace even as clues, red herrings, and dead bodies litter the pages. The delightfully eccentric cast of characters, led by a gay Sikh detective named Harbinder Kaur, have a richness to them, providing a solid foundation for a cleverly constructed whodunnit, with Griffiths offering an insider view of the publishing business. This sometimes has the unfortunate side-effect of taking the story on unexpected detours, slowing the pace to a crawl, but this frothy, entertaining tale of unlikely friendships is adeptly plotted and draws its narrative threads together to deliver a surprising denouement.