main character energy

Niamh was devastated when she lost her mother. Her mother, Annie Morrissey, a crime writer, had taken a fall in the garden working on her gutters. Niamh didn’t have anywhere else to live, so she moved into her mother’s country cottage and tried to deal with her grief. She had been trying to learn screenwriting, but the harsh feedback in her course had flattened her, and she walked away. Now she spends her days gaming and eating junk food.

Or she did. Until the day Leah Rebecca Overton showed up.

Leah was Annie’s main character, the women who solved the crimes in her books and took no prisoners. Niamh wasn’t sure if she was delusional when she first saw Leah in the kitchen, but she did know this. Leah didn’t go away. She smoked, she judged Niamh for her meal choices, and she followed her around. Niamh couldn’t understand why Leah was there. Her mother’s new book was about to hit shelves, but there was no reason for Niamh to be seeing her. And hearing her. Until Leah pointed out the obvious.

The ladder was missing.

The ladder that Annie had fallen from, the one she’d been using to clean out the gutters, something Niamh had never known her to do, especially at night, was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t leaning against the cottage. It wasn’t in the shed. It was missing. And just like that, Niamh was no longer convinced that her mother had died accidentally.

As Niamh and Leah start to look at who might have had a motive to kill Annie, their questions take them from the neighborhood to a crime convention and back home. Was it Annie’s agent, wanting a ghostwriter to take over the series so she could have more control? Was it the neighbor who only came out to his country house on weekends? Was it a crazy fan of her mother’s crime series? Was it the neighbor whose story Annie had borrowed for her new novel? Or could it have been Leah, afraid that Annie was going to end her series and, by extension, end her? Or was it truly just a terrible accident?

Niamh wanders through her grief as she collects clues and information, finally getting to the answers she needs. But will she only figure it out too late to save herself and her mother’s legacy?

How to Kill a Crime Writer is a smart but emotional mystery about a young woman trying to figure out who her mother was before her death while dealing with her shattering grief. It’s clever and sweet, written with a modern flair on timeless tropes. The addition of the character of Leah adds a level of mind-bending logic that gives Niamh more compassion, insight, and self-confidence. The two make a fascinating pair or crimefighters, and they make this book truly unique.

I wasn’t sure quite what to expect from this book, but it is a crazy ride. There is a layer of sadness, as both Niamh and Leah are grieving Annie’s death in their own ways. But there is also some sweet humor, smart and layered plotting, and a lot of heart. Author Sarah Lotz was clearly working through some things as she wrote this book (I encourage you to read the acknowledgements at the end for her story), and some of that personal journey comes through on the pages. She has put a lot of herself in this book, and it shows. I can’t wait to see where she takes us next.

Egalleys for How to Kill a Crime Writer were provided by Berkley through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.