Crime Writer - Dime Sheppard

AUTHOR: Dime Sheppard

GENRE: Crime thriller + Magical Realism.

RATING: 4.25 stars, which would easily have been 4.5 if I had loved the final segment of the book as much as the rest of it.

In a Nutshell: A crime thriller with magical realism thrown in! Amazingly creative! The ending was a bit too farfetched for my liking (don’t forget that I am an overanalytical weirdo), but otherwise, I enjoyed it. To be read with your logical glasses kept aside.

Story Synopsis:

Evie Howland is a crime writer who is dealing with a writer’s block for the sixteenth book of her crime thriller series featuring detectives Carolyn Harding and Jay Ryan. Adding to the trouble is her upcoming wedding to billionaire Daniel Bradley, the public attention of which leaves introverted Evie flustered. The icing on the cake is when her on-page characters start becoming a bit too real. When a too-familiar homicide is reported in the newspapers, it seems like the line between fact and fiction has blurred to a dangerous level. What’s happening, and how will shy Evie save the world from the unforeseen consequences, and herself too?

The book comes to us in the first person perspective of Evie.

Where the book worked for me:

😍 I loved the quirky combination of genres: crime thriller, romcom, magical realism, contemporary drama. It’s an unusual blend that works surprisingly well.

😍 What a unique plot! While this isn’t the first book I’ve read with fictional characters crossing over into the real world (Jodi Picoult’s Between the Lines was the first), the approach was totally different. I enjoyed this one far more and simply couldn’t keep it aside.

😍 The book is quite fast-paced, with enough twists and turns to keep most readers happy. The thrills and pace accelerate with every subsequent chapter!

😍 Evie and her two detectives Carolyn and Jay are such brilliant characters – well sketched, realistic and appealing. (Someone please write a Jay Ryan for my life and make him come alive!) Evie’s struggles with writing also are written well. I am sure writers will empathise with her even more than we ordinary readers will. That said, Evie is an introvert who prefers sitting with her book in a room to going out and mingling with people. Boy, how I connected with her on that feeling!

😍 The villain is truly and properly villainous, and with good reason to boot, and to top it all, with a cool name. After a long time have I read an evil character who is worth being called a villain.

😍 There are plenty of fun elements in the book, and plenty of existential questions wrt writing characters into being and the concept of free will. Liked the balance between deep and frivolous.

😍 The romance – just perfect. (My friends: how many times have you seen me praise the romance in a non-romance genre book?)

😍 To a certain extent, there is a book within a book, but thankfully, the secondary book doesn’t pull down the main plot as it does in Stephen King’s Misery. The subplot appears only when needed.

Where the book could have worked better for me:

😒 The last 20% or so goes into hyper mode, with too many action sequences and not enough of explanations. I would have preferred knowing the answers to some of the oddities that occurred.

😒 Some of the secondary characters are quite predictable though they are used properly in the book. (On second thought, there were certain secondary characters whom I considered predictable but they weren’t. I guess that invalidates the severity of this point. Ignore this point!)

All in all, I enjoyed this thrilling book that offered such a novel take on “Words have power”. Definitely recommended, as long as you know that it has magical realism elements and hence is to be read without overthinking every arc. To my Indian friends, I’ll just add: it is a masala entertainer. (You know what I mean.)

My thanks to Ruby Books and NetGalley for the DRC of “Crime Writer”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.