Title:- The Mystery Writer
Author:- Sulari Gentill
Date published:- will be published on March 19th 2024
No. of pages:- 400 pages
Genre:- Thriller
Setting:- Lawrence Kansas
Rating:-
Plot:- 4/5
Writing:- 4/5
Overall rating:- 4/5
There’s nothing easier to dismiss than a conspiracy theory―until it turns out to be true.
When Theodosia Benton abandons her career path as an attorney and shows up on her brother’s doorstep with two suitcases and an unfinished novel, she expects to face a few challenges. Will her brother support her ambition or send her back to finish her degree? What will her parents say when they learn of her decision? Does she even have what it takes to be a successful writer? What Theo never expects is to be drawn into a hidden literary world in which identity is something that can be lost and remade for the sake of an audience. When her mentor, a highly successful author, is brutally murdered, Theo wants the killer to be found and justice to be served. Then the police begin looking at her brother, Gus, as their prime suspect, and Theo does the unthinkable in order to protect him.
But the writer has left a trail, a thread out of the labyrinth in the form of a story. Gus finds that thread and follows it, and in his attempt to save his sister he inadvertently threatens the foundations of the labyrinth itself. To protect the carefully constructed narrative, Theo Benton, and everyone looking for her, will have to die.
USA Today bestselling author Sulari Gentill takes readers on a rollercoaster ride in The Mystery Writer , a literary thriller that turns the world of books and authors upside down and where a writer’s voice is a thing to be controlled and weaponized, to the peril of everyone who loves a good story.
I enjoyed reading Sulari Gentill’s The Women in the Library and so I am excited to read The Mystery Writer, written by the same author.
The Mystery Writer follows Theodosia Benton moves to live with her attorney brother Gus in Lawrence , Kansas deciding to quit law school after an incident. Theo wants to finish writing her novel and instead of Gus asking her to return back to law school to complete the degree, Gus encourages her to finish her novel. Theo meets a mysterious man named Dan Murdoch who is actually a successful author. He starts mentoring her to write the novel and introduces her to a literary agent. However, Theo then comes across Dan’s body when she was visiting his house and finds that he was brutally murdered. Theo is determined to find the killer but it seems that more and more people seem to die around her.
The writing was great but I felt this book wasn’t as great as the Woman in the Library. However, the book was fast paced, I also liked the brother sister relationship between Gus and Theo. I also like the slow romance blossoming between Mac who is Gus’s friend and Theo as well. There weren’t much twists and turns but the story was engaging as a whole and I also thought that the ending wasn’t bad. Nonetheless, I did enjoy reading this book and cannot wait to read more books from this author. Worth 4 stars.
Many thanks to Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Press for ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.
Once upon a time, Sulari Gentill was a corporate lawyer serving as a director on public boards, with only a vague disquiet that there was something else she was meant to do. That feeling did not go away until she began to write. And so Sulari became the author of the Rowland Sinclair Mysteries: thus far, ten historical crime novels chronicling the life and adventures of her 1930s Australian gentleman artist, the Hero Trilogy, based on the myths and epics of the ancient world, and the Ned Kelly Award winning Crossing the Lines (published in the US as After She Wrote Hime). In 2014 she collaborated with National Gallery of Victoria to write a short story which was produced in audio to feature in the Fashion Detective Exhibition, and thereafter published by the NGV. IN 2019 Sulari was part of a 4-member delegation of Australian crime writers sponsored by the Australia Council to tour the US as ambassadors of Australian Crime Writing.
Sulari lives with her husband, Michael, and their boys, Edmund and Atticus, on a small farm in Batlow where she grows French Black Truffles and refers to her writing as “work” so that no one will suggest she get a real job.
THE WOMAN IN THE LIBRARY, Sulari’s latest novel will be released on 7 June 2022
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