The Mystery Writer by Sulari Gentill

Title: The Mystery Writer

Author: Sulari Gentill

Genre: Crime

Publisher: Ultimo Press

Published: 6^th March 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 304

Price: $34.99

Synopsis: Theo has one dream—to become a bestselling author. Determined to make her mark in the literary world, she heads to the US on a whim to stay with her brother Gus and focus on her writing. But her plans take an unexpected turn when she befriends a famous author, Dan Murdoch, at a local bar—and then he turns up dead. Suddenly, Theo finds herself as the prime suspect.

As Theo grapples with the shocking turn of events, she realises that Dan may not have been the person he seemed to be, and there is something sinister going on in the world of publishing. Desperate to clear her name and uncover the truth, Theo sets out on a quest to find out who killed Dan and why.

As she digs deeper, Theo uncovers a web of deceit, conspiracy, and hidden motives, with clues leading her to a shadowy organisation with far-reaching power. With her own life in danger, Theo must unravel the mystery before she becomes the next victim.

~*~

There’s something about Sulari Gentill novels that always draw me in, and keep me engaged throughout. The Mystery Writer is one of Sulari’s fabulous standalone novels that brings writing, readers, and mysteries together in one neat package. Theo is an Australian writer living in a small town in Kansas with her brother Gus, technically on a break from the gruelling studying she’s supposed to be doing back home. Except…she has other plans.

Theo is friends with a famous author, well, it seems to be so. He could be a mentor or there could be something more sinister going on. But the book opens with a bang: he woke early on the day he died. The mysterious he is revealed slowly, showing how she makes friends with Dan Murdoch. And then, we’re hit with his death. He seemed perfect, but really, like so many people, he’s not. But there is a determination in Theo that many amateur detectives have in crime fiction. She gets involved in the case, much to the chagrin of the investigating police and detectives, and her brothers friends.

There a lots of threads tugged at throughout the novel, and the mystery and murder emerge slowly, which felt very different to crime novels where the crime is present from page one. The fact that we know someone is going to die is the key hint, and it is all handled very well, masterfully even in Sulari’s hands. Theo and Gus, as well as Gus’s American friends bring all sorts of tensions to the novel, and there was one character in particular that never sat well with me. She had my antenna up and gut churning from the time I met her. Veronica was the one character I could never trust, the one person I felt was up to something more than anyone else in the novel.

And I think this is what made it work. Of course novels in certain genres are always going to have common tropes. It is what the author does with them, and in this case, I think Sulari has used the tropes well, adding in a few jokes here and there for readers to appreciate, and using traditional elements to tell a good story.

The Mystery Writer also examines the perils of conspiracy theories, plagiarism, and things like the anonymity of the Internet in her story. How people can feel safe typing behind a screen, and what this can do to someone who has no control over what random strangers can say or post about them. What privacy means and what are people willing to give up to get what they want. Are we willing to give up pieces of ourselves to get what we want? Everything here and much more makes this a meta-fiction, an examination of the realities of being a writer brings Theo’s struggles and mystery to life.

It was built up well, and came together well with layers that needed to be teased out to get to the resolution that reflected the fact that not every case gets easy answers or a complete resolution.