Jessica Brody’s deep knowledge of mysteries and writing is on full display in How to Write a Murder, a delightfully meta take on what it means to tell a killer story.
Nine people travel to the Pen Ultimate Writers Conference, held in the mountains of California. They’re all there thanks to renowned mystery writer Ian McCloud, who’s set to deliver the keynote address. The group is made up of McCloud’s personal assistant, his recently fired literary agent and his on-again-off-again girlfriend, plus the conference facilitator and multiple writers with varying levels of admiration for the famed author. Everyone is hiding something, and when someone in their group winds up dead, the writers put their extensive knowledge of criminal activity to the test to figure out what happened and why.
It’s a simple enough concept: Take a group of people well-versed in misdirection and crime, who all also have secret agendas and hidden motives, and strand them in a remote location. When everyone knows how to get away with murder, how can anyone be sure they’ll live to see morning?
Yet this is no ordinary mystery novel. The propulsive plot is interspliced with confessions from an unnamed writer who gathered everyone together to achieve their ultimate goal: a meticulously planned murder. As the group tries to unravel the mounting mystery, they lean on a mystery writing guide called The Bestseller Formula (surely a stand-in for Brody’s own Save the Cat! Writes a Novel: The Last Book on Novel Writing You’ll Ever Need) to help them catch the killer. This makes How to Write a Murder not only a book about writers working together to unravel a whodunit, but also chock-full of references to crime fiction tropes and twists. Perhaps the shortest description of Brody’s ambitious book is that it’s And Then There Were None meets Save the Cat! Writes a Novel meets Inception. There are layers upon layers to Brody’s work, and mystery lovers will enjoy peeling them back and decoding all of her references.
At nearly 600 pages, this is a hefty book. Still, every character is integral to the plot, and Brody keeps the story moving briskly. Fans of puzzles, meta storytelling and mysteries about mysteries will devour Brody’s love letter to classic crime fiction.