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Bought Copy (Available from Bookshop.org – Affiliate link.)

Rating 🌻🌻🌻 – Hardy Perennial (Out of 3 – check here for rating description)

Despite being aware of Chris Brookmyre’s novels for a very long time (they were popular back in the early naughties when I looked after Waterstones Guildford’s crime section), I’ve never actually read one.

I like to think in an alternate reality, there’s another version of me that reads all the crime fiction they want to read, while wondering whether they have an alter-ego somewhere that reads lots of SFF. Alternate realities and alter-egos, eh? The Cracked Mirror has them in (Sam) spades.

When I first read about The Cracked Mirror. I knew I would have to pick it up. The novel’s central premise involves a hardened L.A. cop (you know the type) working with an octogenarian Scottish Librarian, who solves murders in her local village (you know the type here, too.) This mash-up is why the novel is so delicious and intriguing.

Penny Coyne and Johnny Hawke are thrown together when Johnny’s investigation into a locked-room murder slams into a Scottish wedding. Penny has been invited to the wedding, but she’s not sure why. When the bride-to-be kills herself, again behind a locked door, only Penny and Johnny think that she’s the victim of foul play.

It Started With A Tweet

According to the afterword, the genesis of The Cracked Mirror is a tweet from Brookmyre’s editor, “I would kill for a really clever meta whodunnit that plays with the genre…”

Brookmyre picks up that gauntlet and runs with it, and I’m so glad he did, as I think The Cracked Mirror is a contender for my book of 2025.

If you wondered how a Harry Bosch/Miss Marple mash-up could ever work, once you’re a few chapters into The Cracked Mirror, you’ll be wondering how it could not work. Brookmyre’s conjoining of two crime staples is seamless.

The story is absorbing and intriguing in equal measure. The opening half of the novel is exemplary at building suspense, posing questions and teasing answers.

As the novel progresses, it becomes even more bewildering, opening up further surprising avenues. Avenues that unexpectedly dovetail with my previous reviewed book, All That They See or Seem, by Ken Liu.

There was a point where I thought that the novel’s house of cards was going to collapse. That the intrigue had racked up my expectations so high, the payoff could never deliver. Brookmyre does deliver. The end of the novel is mind-bending, somewhat preposterous, but also riveting to the very last page.

Holly golly, this is a good book. As I closed the final pages, I knew I had to check out more of Brookmyre’s fiction, but more than that, I thought what a wonderful film, or better still, 9-episode Apple+ drama, The Cracked Mirror would make. It’s a book that subverts and combines genres to deliver something fresh and original that would translate brilliantly to the screen.