DI Caius Beauchamp is out running on Hampstead Heath when he discovers the body of a woman. He and his team are able to identify her, but struggle to find a motive to begin with. The investigation leads them to the upper class who mud doesn't stick to. Every avenue of investigation leads to Rupert, the boyfriend of the victim, but he has an alibi.. When someone confesses, it seems that the case is closed, but Caius feels that someone doesn't add up. however his boss moves them onto another murder case. Caius decides to pursue his hunch anyway.
I found this book really caught my imagination and really enjoyed reading it. Hopefully there is going to be more
of Caius and his team.

This whodunnit is Agatha Christie meets Made in Chelsea. The suspects and victims are mainly Oxford educated, trust fund types who read Classics (aka taught at private schools and less competition for uni places) and work in auction houses and who are snobbish about Oxford Brookes graduates and social media influencers. The detectives are from more diverse and less privileged backgrounds.

To be honest, the characters were too unpleasant and judgemental and the plot too pedestrian to sustain my interest.

With thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review it before publication.

What a great debut novel! I really enjoyed reading this. A great mix of likeable and loathsome characters, a murder mystery and humour with plenty of twists. I couldn’t put it down. The book is brilliantly well written with quick, witty and funny dialogue. The plot keeps you guessing to the end.
A brilliant page turner I definitely recommend reading this book.
Thanks to #NetGallery #FaberandFaberLtd for an arc of #TheOtherHalf in exchange for an honest review.

Very readable - I whizzed through this book far more quickly than usual. Loved the writing, and Nell, the central character is a great invention. The behaviour of the upper class characters is entertaining if rather bonkers - there’s a touch of the PG Wodehouse about the cast of characters, although with a much darker edge. I do have to say though that the two main police detectives, Caius and Matt, are the most unbelievable police officers I have ever come across, either within or outside fiction! But if you aren’t looking for realism, this is a great read.

The Other Half by Charlotte Vassell

Ooh I’m not normally a big reader of police procedurals, but when I read the blurb for this one I had to give it a read. It was thoroughly engrossing and I raced through this fantastic debut in one sitting.

34 year old Caius Beauchamp, a mixed race detective, has just been dumped. While trying to get himself into shape he stumbles across a stiletto in the bushes, attached to a corpse. The victim is a young, beautiful and wealthy Instagram star. Investigating the case leads him to confront an impossible world of titles, minor drug habits, Oxford Classics degrees, excessive champagne consumption and the ignored ghosts of Britain’s colonial past.

I loved this book. It had so many elements reminiscent of The Secret History - arrogant, entitled 20 somethings with an interest in the classics doing varying degrees of bad things. Thankfullly, unlike TSH, there were some very endearing characters. The detective and his colleagues are an interesting bunch and I hope we might see more of their adventures again. I found the themes lightly handled and it was clear that the author had a deep understanding of the classics. It was full of intrigue and suspense throughout.

The pacing was excellent. The only slight downside for me was an abundance of characters who I couldn’t always keep up with.

I would highly recommend this if you enjoy a whodunnit and a bit of intrigue with some academic vibes to boot. It comes out on 19 January. Thanks so much to netgalley & Faber & Faber for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Other Half is a book that centres on a group of rich, entitled people doing mostly rich, entitled things. Did I, therefore, feel some satisfaction that one of them was murdered? I may be horrible but yes, yes I did...

This book is a darkly satisfying satire about the upper, privileged class of people in Britain and their complete self-righteousness. Although many of the characters are not people you'd want to be friends with or even run into, there are some likeable characters in this novel, including DI Caius Beauchamp, who is investigating the murder of Clemmie, a rich Instagram influencer who is found dead on - where else? - Hampstead Heath the night after her boyfriend's birthday party.

I am a sucker for a mystery, especially a classic 'whodunnit-but-everyone-seems-to-have-an-alibi', and in The Other Half, Charlotte Vassell skillfully combines tension, intrigue and mystery with scrutiny of the rich and powerful in London. The book paints a sardonic view of these upper-class characters (though we see that Nell and some of her peers do have a conscience, so they're not all bad!) and I have to admit, I enjoyed hoping for their downfall as I read on! The mystery element kept me completely wrapped up in the story - I wanted to know who did it and why, and I hope this is the start of a new series as I would have happily read much more about the police working on this case, especially DI Caius Beauchamp.

I really wanted to like this book. I loved the idea for the plot, but found the characters so awful, self-absorbed, and unlikeable that I struggled to get through every page. I just didn’t care enough about any of them to want to know what happened next.
The writing style was alright, so I can’t fault the author on that.
Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read this early in exchange for an honest review.

I found this book very negative dark and actually quite toxic. The characters were all awful and some quite repellent which may have been the general idea. The actual writing was ok, the subject just horrible but that was probably the intent.
Although I can understand that some people may enjoy this kind of book, it’s not one I can recommend or spend anymore time on. I read within 24 hours, speed reading a lot of it as I really wasn’t interested in spoilt over privileged idiots, the mistakes they made, their toxic relationships and the Silent Witness tv style detective vision. I won’t be reviewing elsewhere as not interested in spreading negativity.
Thank you to NetGalley for the early read.

Really good for a debut and darkly funny. Im not one for relationships books at times but this one appealed and i was not disappointed!

Various earlier reviewers have described this book as a modern-day satire of hedonistic, self-obsessed millennials, and they are all right. It is also, however, a gripping thriller, set in a part of twenty-first century London marked by social media, health obsessions and pseudo knowledge. Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp is tasked with investigating the sudden death of influencer Clemency O’Hara after a debauched birthday party thrown by her entitled and rather obnoxious boyfriend Rupert. The narrative is split between the points of view of Caius, who is dealing with his own challenges in his private life, and party guest Nell, which makes for good pace and interest. While most threads were untangled and cleared up at the end of the novel, some mysteries remained, which leaves ample room for a sequel featuring the same cast.

Many thanks to NetGalley and to the publishers for the free ARC that allowed me to produce this honest and unbiased review.

The Other Half is a fantastically strong crime debut from Charlotte Vassell.

Laser-focused on a rich and elite set of friends who live in London (formerly of Oxford), we begin this dark satire at a black-tie birthday party at McDonalds. Only one person doesn't turn up - the girlfriend of the birthday boy (desperate to dump her, by the way) - and the next day she's found dead in a park, a crown of flowers on her head and a slash to the neck.

Detective Caius Beauchamp isn't from this circle's particular world, but he's smart and sophisticated all the same - a modern detective well-prepared for a fresh take on society crime. He and his team are competent and smart, which I always enjoy in a crime book. The other characters aren't always as likeable, but they are intriguing.

The main thrust of the plot (ie whodunnit) wraps up well, but there are other threads unresolved in this book - whether that is on purpose for another book, or on purpose simply to make you question society's flaws, I'm unsure. But if you don't like loose threads, this may not be for you. Otherwise this is an entertaining uncosy-yet-somehow-almost-cosy crime novel that I thoroughly enjoyed.

During the first couple of chapters I wasn’t sure if I should give up reading this book because I didn’t like any of the characters, but I’m pleased I persisted because it became a good battle between high class Oxford graduates and a cunning police team.
A posh guy’s girlfriend is murdered and the writer introduces us to the two sets of cast members, the unlikeable posh people and the unusual police team.
I give the writer an extra star for using a wide variety of diversity in the characters which is something many writers fail to remember; that of matching the characters to real society.. I found the detective and the most unlikeable suspect having the same surname a strange choice, although they were not related.
There’s a lot of secrets in the past and you’ll find these as each chapter unfolds.
The whodunnit is impossible to guess, until you have all the facts and these are gradually provided by the writer. If you guess right earlier, then it was purely a guess.
Starting the glitzy posh people’s party in a MacDonald’s private room was an odd beginning, with plenty more to follow. Thanking the publisher for the free book, I will see what else this writer has been up to.

On paper this had everything I could want: a whodunnit murder, lots of Greco-Roman references and a group of detectives hot on the trail. Unfortunately, it was so full of stereotypes that the main storyline felt like a distraction.

The suspects are part of a an Oxford set (a distinction is made that the wannabes were at Oxford Brooke - it’s that kind of book) who have gone on to lead intertwined, moneyed lives. The outsider that everyone wants is Nell - beautiful, brilliant with a secret of her own (that makes her ok for the detective to fancy).

The detectives are all definitely heroic because they are all from a minority: mixed race (Caius), Chinese (Matt) and a lesbian (Alex). Caius is always being chippy about the poshos but if the author wanted us to take it seriously then she shouldn’t have called him Caius (pronounced ‘keys’ presumably) for heaven’s sake and then made a big deal about the pronunciation of Beauchamp (yes, we get the slave reference).

I couldn’t take any of the politics seriously because it was so heavy-handed but I also couldn’t take it as satire because it wasn’t funny and was, again, too heavy-handed.

It reads to me as though a follow-up is on the way, so a plea to the author: PLEASE, get rid of the many, many stupid names (Hereward Trollope-Bagshott, for example), the determination to show your own knowledge by foisting it on the reader in the guise of poking fun at characters and the moral politics and let your story and characters shine..

The Other Half is a thoroughly enjoyable novel about some unpleasant over-privileged rich young people and their lives (and deaths) in London and the Home Counties. They’ve all got too much money and not enough to do - what’s going to happen when one of them turns up dead? Can their money help them to escape the consequences of the law?

There were some laugh out loud moments for me with this book and it was much better than the blurb led me to believe: witty, caustic and clever. Who will triumph - Beauchamp the rich playboy or Beauchamp (pronounced differently) the middle class mixed race copper? A recommended read for lovers of modern whodunnits.

Rupert has his 30th birthday in rooms over MacDonald's. But its not burgers on the menu.
Next day his girlfriend is found murdered and everyone has an alibi.
Detective Caius Beauchamp is the investigating officer and it very up market. Can he eunravel all the relationships as well as the lies and secrets.

I'm in two minds about this book, on the one hand, I loved the premise, but found it almost too cliched, but I also found there were literally no likable characters at all. It almost became too much of a parody,

I have seen other reviewers compare it to 'Made in Chelsea' but having never seen the program, cannot comment, I just hope that really isn't true.

The story felt laboured in parts with an awful lot of long, unnecessary words, just to sure how much more superior some people are to the 'plebs'

I can admire the ambition of the author but unfortunately, it didn't work for me, in fact, I ended up just being aggravated by the story.

I loved the idea of the book and quite enjoyed some of it but there was a lot of,for me,unnecessary use of unusual words which the made the author seem they were part of the class they were trying to mock throughout the story,if that makes any sense? Not particularly likeable characters but a good few twists made this on balance a goodish read

A snarky look at murder through the class system that is definitely alive and kicking in Britain today. A bit too silly, stereotypical for me but some of the twists were good.

An entertaining story of a murder in a group of the (mostly) horrible upper classes. Once you get into the swing of it and find out which characters are likeable it’s a readable murder mystery. I just hope they’re more caricature than real.
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC in return for a review.

This book was based around the British class system and it was brilliant. I found myself either liking / disliking all the characters, as they were all well written. I also really enjoyed the way it flipped between different people to tell the story.