Peter Swanson is back - with a chilling and fiendish puzzle of novel, the crime novel everyone will be talking about...
If you're on the list you're marked for death.
The envelope is unremarkable. There is no return address. It contains a single, folded, sheet of white paper.
The envelope drops through the mail slot like any other piece of post. But for the nine complete strangers who receive it - each of them recognising just one name, their own, on the enclosed list - it will be the most life altering letter they ever receive. It could also be the last, as one by one, they start to meet their end.
But why?
A twisty and entertaining mystery-thriller
Nine Lives is an engrossing and entertaining read, successfully employing a multi-narrator format to tell a twisty and intriguing tale.
With references to classic crime fiction of the "golden age", principally Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (and its earlier iterations) and The A.B.C. Murders, sprinkled through the narrative, Peter Swanson utilises a well-known but always fascinating trope - that of the "murder list".
Nine apparently unconnected individuals across the USA receive a mysterious item in the post in mid-September - a relatively unremarkable envelope containing only a printed list of nine names, including their own. Their reactions range from dismissive to perturbed, but without having any links to each other, there's little they can do. Then one of their number is found dead, apparently forcibly drowned in a tidal pool on the Maine coast...
We follow the remaining characters from the list with a rising sense of inevitability as, one by one, they're murdered by an unseen assassin. Meanwhile, FBI Agent Jessica Winslow, whose name also appears on the list, tries desperately to find the link between those targeted, facing the realisation that the answer may lie in the distant past.
There are fleeting clues and red herrings sprinkled through the various narrative threads, but I didn't pick the twist until it was upon me, and while the book seemed to wrap up very quickly, it was a satisfying conclusion. The effective employment of ten separate but interlinked narrative threads, including Maine-based Detective Sam Hamilton, who investigates the first crime then works doggedly in the background to put the pieces together, is a challenging proposition. However, through the use of short, punchy chapters and well differentiated characters, I feel Peter Swanson has pulled it off admirably. Not all of the potential victims are particularly likeable, but they're well-developed and three-dimensional, even the few who are killed off quite early on.
I found Nine Lives a quick and entertaining read, and not overly dark in spite of the subject matter - it's a well-executed modern interpretation of the "golden age" style. I'd recommend it to any reader who enjoys twisty plot-driven mystery-thrillers.
Sarah, 04/03/2022
