I mean…who doesn’t love a whodunnit?! This one delivered! As one reviewer said: “West Heart Kill is a stunning, exceptional, and, critically, thoroughly enjoyable novel which will be devoured by devotees and casual enjoyers of the murder mystery alike. It's not for everyone, but those it's for are in for great fun. A terrific success.”

I really cannot fairly review this title since I abandoned it with less than 20% read.. The second person narrative irritated me to the point that I couldn’t read any more. Sorry!

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At the exclusive West Heart country club, couples live, play and enjoy life together in harmony. Or so it appears. Actually, everyone hides a secret. And three people are murdered in the span of one weekend. The reader gets to solve the mystery, with clues from literature.
I enjoyed the unfolding of the story. But the style element of narrative disruption made the book difficult to read at times.
I really did not like the ending - it gets 2 stars!
Fortunately, I can give the book 3 because of the interesting references to mystery novels and literature.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

West Heart Kill is a debut standalone mystery by Dann McDorman. Released 24th Oct 2023 by Knopf Doubleday on their Knopf imprint, it's 288 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. Paperback format due out from the same publisher in 3rd quarter 2024. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links.

This is a classic style closed-circle mystery with an isolated setting, a fun set of suspects, and an eccentric/somewhat unreliable/incomplete narration. It's set in 1976, and engages the reader from the first page. The author is especially adept at setting descriptions and dialogue and the prose flows very very well.

Readers should understand that the author tosses the fourth wall out of the train in the beginning and never really sees the need to pick it up again. The plot and mystery itself are cleverly constructed and well engineered.

It's not a book to read passively. Expect to be moderately bewildered the first 20% of the book. Once the reader finds the balance, however, it develops moderately well. There's a lot of style over substance with all sorts of literary tricks (broken fourth wall, a play as a narrative device inside the story, changing narrator halfway through, "why" instead of "who" for the mystery itself, and several others) felt like too much and made for uneven reading.

The author knows his business, but in this case, less would've been more. It's clever, but clearly openly aware of its own cleverness.

Three and a half stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Bicentennial weekend at a remote, exclusive hunting club in upstate New York. Private detective Adam McAnnis cadges an invitation from an old college friend and finds himself amongst the moneyed and dysfunctional. Festivities take a sinister turn when the club becomes the scene for a series of deaths.

In what seems to be an attempt to write a throwback to classic noir mystery novels, the author has merely succeeded in creating a confused primer on noir mystery tropes and an encyclopedia of all things 70’s — Jox sneakers, White Owl cigars, clams casino, shag hairdos. The only thing missing was a cheese log.

Constant shifts in perspective resulted in a storyline that is constantly starting and stopping. The author continually shifts the narrative from first person, with no clear idea of which character is the narrator, to second person in which the reader is instructed on plot devices and told how they should be perceiving what they are reading by the author. It was really very jarring. And the cherry on top…an unsatisfying ending.

I try very hard, even if a book isn’t my cup of tea, to not be overly negative or biting in my review. But as I read on I felt as if the author was trying too hard to impress…and I was not. In the end reading this was like stumbling onto a discarded script for a TV pilot…a poorly conceived mashup of Columbo and Sam Spade.

I started this early this year when I was initially approved for it on NetGalley. I was trying it as my nighttime read and I immediately bounced off the style, and decided to try again at another time, during the day when I wasn’t tired.

Well I tried again and I’m still bouncing off it.

I have a few issues:

McDormann is apparently a TV producer? And it’s written a lot like how I would expect a TV producer to write a stage script. There weren’t many dialogue tags (if any). Sort of like if you had a script and each line had the name of the speaker written next to it:
Detective: Hello
Protagonist: Hello.
Detective: How are you?
Etc.

Except we have quotation marks and no name to guide us, so it’s confusing to follow. So it looks more like this:

“Hello.”
“Hello.”
“How are you?”

Is this person talking to themselves? Are there two people in the conversation? Three? It just doesn’t work without any context at all.

He also breaks the fourth wall. Which I actually don’t mind, by itself. I think this has the potential to be a very immersive reading experience for the right reader…

If you can accept the stage directions he’s giving you. A lot of lines read like this: “You look down the hill and your eye catches the sparkle of the lake.” Or “You wonder what happened to the last guest they invited to join.” or “From this, you infer…” and “You don’t want a mystery filled with the distractions of…”

Except I wasn’t wondering or feeling that, or inferring anything, so my immediate response is just to say no.

I normally do love a book with a cinematic feel, but I think some respect should still be paid to the medium. Writing for TV and writing for a book are not the same, and it felt to me like the author forgot that.

I’m not adding it to my read shelf, because I only ever got 10/15% in.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy.

This was a very hard book for me to get through. The “teaching” of how to write a mystery novel was a definite downside from the start. I felt very disconnected from the book and characters from the beginning. I was so disappointed because the blurb made it sound like a book I would very much enjoy, but sadly, I didn’t.

I realized at about the halfway point, I just didn't care about any of the characters or the ultimate storyline of this book. This book read like a screenplay with some extremely long and boring historical asides about the history of whatever mystery trope or device and other books they've appeared in, etc. I think I felt so outside of the story that nothing clicked enough to feel like I was actually drawn in to care. Why am I getting a mystery-literature lesson every 10 pages? Premise intrigued me, but the execution fell very flat.

Talk about an intriguing title with an even more intriguing story. I truly enjoyed this story and I could not put it down when I picked it up. I higly recommend you check out this amazing story that will keep you on your toes.

While mostly enjoyable, this experience felt akin to being cornered by the resident know-it-all at a cocktail party. It presents itself as a whodunit, or more accurately a whydunit, with some intriguing structural twists. Initially narrated by our detective, Adam McAnnis, the story then shifts to an unknown resident of West Heart for its second half. Additionally, the author employs a play as a storytelling device in the final third of the book, with a nearly omniscient narrator guiding the tale. Despite these quirks, I ultimately found it entertaining, though the ending veered towards ambiguity, possibly even pretentiousness, which I didn't particularly appreciate. Hence, I settle on a rating of 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4, acknowledging the strength of this debut effort.

I'm a murder mystery fan and lately I've been seeing more and more of these "meta type" versions of the genre, where the 4th wall is broken (e.g., "Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone"). This was a fun entry into this micro-genre with lots of fresh takes - glad I read this one.

Thank you NetGalley, for an advance copy of this book. I was interested in reading “a unique and irrestible murder mystery” and the book mostly lived up to its description. A private detective, Adam McAnnis, joins an old college friend at an exclusive upstate NY club for the Bicentennial weekend. After one of the members is found dead in the lake, a major storm hits, isolating everyone at the resort - and then two more people die. I thought this book had a strong start and kept me interested, but about halfway through, the book became more “meta” - it seemed more like a mystery book about mysteries and murder, than a good story. Without revealing any twists or the ending, I will say that the second half of the book to me was dissatisfying and I missed a more typical conclusion.

In his fiction debut, MSNBC news producer McDorman crafts a metafictional tale that melds a murder mystery set in a prestigious upstate New York hunting club with a deep dive into the conventions and intricacies of the mystery genre itself.

Narrated through the eyes of young private detective Adam McAnnis, the story unfolds against the backdrop of the club's annual Fourth of July gathering. Initially hired to investigate a potential threat against one of the guests, McAnnis finds himself embroiled in a web of intrigue and deception when a female guest is discovered dead in the lake—a death initially deemed a suicide. As McAnnis delves deeper into the mystery, McDorman intersperses the narrative with insightful commentaries on the elements of suspense, plot, and narrative technique within the mystery genre itself.

Drawing from a rich tapestry of literary influences, from Shakespeare and Sophocles to Dashiell Hammett and Patricia Highsmith, McDorman weaves a complex narrative that invites readers to ponder the nature of storytelling and the art of detection. While the exploration of these themes is intellectually stimulating, some readers may find the novel's overt cleverness detracts from the enjoyment of the murder mystery at its core. As the story reaches its conclusion, readers may find themselves both entertained by the narrative twists and turns yet left longing for a more seamless integration of the metafictional elements with the primary plot.

Overall, McDorman's debut novel is an engaging and thought-provoking read, offering an entertaining blend of mystery and metafiction. However, its penchant for cleverness may prove divisive among readers, leaving some craving a more straightforward approach to storytelling.

Detective Adam McAnnis heads to an elite country club in the woods, hired by an unknown person to examine the suspects at the club for some potential crime. Everyone has secrets and as the holiday weekend progresses multiple members of the group end up dead. Its all of the elements of a classic whodunit mystery: a remote location, rich angry old friends, an outside detective, and a storm keeping them all trapped there. Only this mystery is a little different, because the narrator only wants to talk to you the reader, while the events of this murder mystery takes place.

West Heart Kill was a fascinating read. A whodunit that interrogates the entire genre of whodunits. The book confronts the reader with their own fascination for the genre and the narration I found to be very unique in how it switches between an omnicient narrator, the lead detective, and the rest of the residents of West Heart. My issue with the book is that for me it was mostly just a very neat experience. The book shifts in styles of writing as well, presenting interview transcripts and having the third act confrontation presented as a play, which was a fun change of pace. I learned a lot about the genre from the little non-fiction interstitials inserted into the narrative, but I did not find the central mystery or characters to be particularly engaging. I think that was partly the point of the book itself but made it more of a struggle to get through. This book is absolutely a unique murder mystery, one that draws from so many influences in the genre and I can really understand loving this book, but it did not work for me personally.

Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for a copy of West Heart Kill in exchange for an honest review.

Everybody loves a good whodunnit! Great plot with many characters to keep track of that doesn’t quite materialize in the end.
Interested to read a next book by this author.

The eARC for WEST HEART KILL landed on my
Kindle months ago, and while I was mildly intrigued, I decided to wait for some reviews before diving in. I'm always interested in a thriller/murder mystery that subverts the typical tropes and format, but I had heard some qualms about the execution of this one. Private detective Adam McAnnis is invited to the Bicentennial weekend and the exclusive West Heart club in upstate New York by an old college friend. When he arrives, he finds himself surrounding by a group of not-so-friendly strangers. Soon, three people will be dead, as a major storm knocks the power out. The structure of this book is unlike anything I've read before. The first third or so is told from the POV of McAnnis, which is fine, albeit a tad rambly. Then, the novel pivots to tell the rest of the story from the perspective of an unknown narrator, while also invoking a play as a storytelling device. While I thought that this choice was ambitious, it didn't entirely work for me. The whodunit mystery aspect was cool on its own, and I don't think this book necessarily needed all of these flashy storytelling devices. It made the narrative feel a bit disjointed, and required some extra brainpower from the reader to avoid confusion. The constant breaking of the fourth wall felt rather gimmicky, which coming from me (someone who loves an aside), is saying a lot.
Beware: a lot of these tangents give spoilers for classic mystery novels (think Agatha Christie). I saw a review saying this element of the novel felt a little "mansplainy" and i'd have to agree. In terms of the actual storytelling, I thought the mystery was compelling, but suffered a bit from the bloated structure. The ending was too predictable, which is always a bummer, especially in a whodunit format like this one. I admire the effort, but this wasn't my fave.

An isolated hunt club. A raging storm. Three corpses, discovered within four days. A cast of monied, scheming, unfaithful characters. When private detective Adam McAnnis joins an old college friend for the Bicentennial weekend at the exclusive West Heart club in upstate New York, he finds himself among a set of not-entirely-friendly strangers. Then the body of one of the members is found at the lake’s edge; hours later, a major storm hits. By the time power is restored on Sunday, two more people will be dead. I am not really sure how to describe this book other than to say I loved it! It is written in a very unique way that may not appeal to everyone but I highly recommend giving it a try.

I loved this book. The style of writing takes a minute to get used to, as the author directly addresses the reader throughout the book, but it's a really unique and fun way to set up a murder mystery. It almost reads like the most fun textbook you'll ever come across. I also live in a very similar lake community, so I had so much imaging the residents I know as the characters in this book! It is very Agatha Christie-esque, and overall incredibly clever and different.