THE AUTHOR'S GUIDE TO MURDER

After the murder of a literary superstar at a writing conference in remote Scotland, three American authors join forces to clear their names and uncover a killer.

It will be clear to readers from the very first pages that, despite claiming to be best friends, Cassie Pringle, Emma Endicott, and Kat de Noir do not get along. Cassie is a mother of six who writes cozy mysteries in her free time; Emma is a blue-blooded New Englander who specializes in historical fiction; and Kat writes erotic urban fantasy novels. Nonetheless, they manage to convince their agent to let them write a book together and foot the bill for them to travel to a conference at Kinloch Castle hosted by Brett Saffron Presley, the internationally bestselling author—and “spokesperson for the famous Presley How-to-Write-a-Novel software”—who owns the castle. When Brett is murdered and his body is found high in Kinloch’s tower, it falls to Detective Chief Inspector Euan Macintosh to interrogate the castle’s occupants, including Cassie, Emma, and Kat. While Euan can’t stand the American novelists—or Americans in general—it becomes quickly evident that they might be his only chance at finding out who killed Brett and why. The problem is that none of their stories about what brought them to the castle seem to line up. While three authors collaborating on a book about three authors writing a book together feels fresh and charming at first, especially as each chapter changes point-of-view, the writing is uneven and the plot disjointed. The result feels less like satire and more like secondhand embarrassment as Cassie, Emma, and Kat bumble their way through the Scottish countryside.

A murder mystery that tries to be tongue-in-cheek but can’t quite pull it off.