Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, is publishing a new review of Thought You Were Dead by Terry Griggs. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.
Thought You Were Dead by Terry Griggs
Non-series
Biblioasis (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 1-897231-53-9 (1897231539)
ISBN-13: 978-1-897231-53-1 (9781897231531)
Publication Date: April 2009
List Price: $18.95
Review: Terry Griggs pens a most unusual tale, in a most unusual manner, with Thought You Were Dead, a murder mystery set in and about a fictional town in Ontario. Also included every few chapters or so are illustrations by Nick Craine.
The story features Chellis Beith, whose primary job is to research characters, locations, even methods of murder, for mystery writer Athena Havlock, who doesn't write under her own name, reserving that for more literate (and far less lucrative) novels. He's also slightly obsessed with women. As Athena tells him, "[Y]our mother abandons you as a baby, your adoptive mother dies, foolishly, unnecessarily, your girlfriend leaves you and marries someone else, but still uses you for test-marketing, and you are employed, dominated shall we say, by another female -- me. Your experience of women has been nothing but abandonment and betrayal." It is during the course of one of his research adventures for Athena that he learns of the murder of a local book reviewer. It doesn't really affect him one way or the other -- after all, he's only assumes the role of a private investigator when he's trying to unearth something for his employer to use in one of her books -- but then Athena vanishes and Chellis discovers a vast amount of information relating to the murder in her house. He initially attributes it to background material for a new mystery by the author, but later thinks it may be more sinister.
Thought You Were Dead demands quite a bit from the reader. Though not quite non-linear in style, it often reads that way. Chapters frequently start in a different time or place and it isn't until 2 or 3 pages pass that what's occurring right then and there becomes apparent. Similarly, an event may occur mid-chapter but not be explained until later. For example, when Chellis is hit on the head by an errant golf ball, it isn't until several rather incoherent paragraphs later that the golfer enters the picture to explain what happened. True, it helps illustrate the confusion in Chellis' mind at the time, but to the reader, it's merely confusing. There are also many, possibly just a few too many, diversions onto other topics, not necessarily unrelated to the murder mystery plot but definitely tangential. Finally, there's a sense that the author is having a bit of fun here. Images of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are evoked at times, albeit in a somewhat satirical manner.
Still and all, those readers looking for an unconventional novel with a unique sense of style, voice and place, will find Thought You Were Dead a most satisfying choice.
Special thanks to Biblioasis for providing a copy of Thought You Were Dead for this review.
Review Copyright © 2009 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
If you are interested in purchasing Thought You Were Dead from Amazon.com, please click the button to the right.
Synopsis (from the publisher): Meet the Perfect Man ... no, no, he's not the hero of Thought You Were Dead. That would be Chellis Beith, literary researcher, slacker, reluctant detective, and a man bedevilled by every woman in his life. There's his lost love, Elaine Champion, a now happily married inventor who uses him for market research, his best friend's dotty ex-wife, Moe, his two vanished mothers, and his menacing boss, Athena Havlock, a celebrated writer who herself becomes embroiled in the dark side of fiction. The humour is wild, the language a thrill, the mystery within marvelously deft and daft. And as for the Perfect Man ... well, nothing is as it seems. Is it?
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