This is an interesting, well-written book with plenty of layers and depth, centered as it is around a story within a story. It definitely drew me in, and I do love books with several parts or narratives - particularly when there's also an element of mystery!

The Book of Mirrors is a story of several parts - we start by reading the manuscript sent to an agent, but soon discover it's only a partial manuscript and so although it seems to be based on truth, on a real murder of a University Professor which happened many years ago, we don't know if it's true - and if it is true then who killed him, and how?

We switch to other viewpoints as they try to find out what actually happened. I really love novels which are essentially a 'book within a book' with dual narratives, as this is. I always find them intriguing, and The Book of Mirrors was no exception. The only annoying thing about this kind of novel is that I often feel that, just I'm just becoming completely absorbed in the plot, it switches and I feel a bit disappointed because I want to continue. However this does allow the reader to read from another viewpoint, and tease out the small intricacies connected to the murder that only certain characters may know.

Avoiding some of the characteristics of the crime genre, this book does not focus on the police investigation much at all; it's more focussed on the private investigator hired by the publishers, who is trying to work out what happened. Memories are muddied and forgotten (and purposefully altered?) so that nothing is as it seems. I really like that sense of uncertainty. When reading the manuscript we are focussed on the story as it unravels, completely at the mercy of the narrator, Peter, and whether he is a reliable narrator - or not.

E.O. Chirovici writes really well, and creates a novel which you'll want to keep reading. It's different and deliciously deep, drawing you in as you try to unravel the details!

I found this quite hard to get into and it took me a while to read because of that. A well written book it just was not my thing.

A thoroughlty absorbing read

At the heart of this book is a cold case, the murder of a Princeton professor 25 years before which has remained unsolved. There is a lot of hype surrounding this book and I was intrigued by the constant references to memory and how it can be manipulated. It starts out well enough, a literary agent receives a partial manuscript from a man who not only knew the professor but was a suspect at the time. The letter which accompanies the manuscript claims that the full manuscript will reveal the murderer. From there the book follows the attempts of the literary agent, a reporter and a policeman to establish the truth.
I found it difficult to get into this book at first, it is divided into three sections and I found the first, told from the viewpoint of the agent, very dry. The individuals introduced in the manuscript are not very engaging and not a lot happens really. From there the story picks up a bit and a few twists are introduced which keep you guessing and I did want to find out out it concluded.
My main issue with this book is that it doesn't live up to the hype. As a straightforward murder mystery it works quite well but the references to memory and how people's perceptions can vary for the same event are not followed through. What you actually get are lies, deception and delusion, not the mind playing tricks on you over time. There are very simple reasons for the differences in the accounts. This is very disappointing as I expected more.
My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this arc in return for an honest review.

A partial manuscript surfaces, a memoir of a man who was at Princeton in the late 1980's. It details amongst other things, his relationship with a famous professor, Joseph Wieder, who was murdered, and the killer never found. The agent who receives the manuscript believes that it could hold the key to a twenty five year old mystery, if only they could locate the full version. As we're taken through different recollections by different people however, there's some small but key differences, and you're left wondering who is telling the truth, and who has something to hide.

Interesting premise when I read the summary. We see things from three main view points - a writer, an agent and a detective, and are also treated to occasional flashbacks to the events of twenty five years ago. Overall impressions are that I was left a little disappointed, although I suspect that's as much to do with the sheer amount of hype I'd read about it than the book itself. The quality of the writing is ok, with a decent pace as it bounces from past to present, and from one view point to another, but just didn't grab me and pull me in as I'd hoped. I put that down to not truly being engaged by the characters - they're relatable enough, but just don't have enough depth to make me struggle to put it down. Personally I love a book that makes my brain ache with the possibilities of the who, what and why, and this didn't have enough tension, drama and twists for my liking.

In his note, the author states “I’ve always thought that after three hundred pages readers should get something more than just finding out who killed Tom, Dick or Harry, no matter how sophisticated and surprising the twists might have been.” Although the premise of the book – an unfinished manuscript containing an account of an unsolved murder – is intriguing, I’m afraid the book didn’t live up to initial expectations for me. The use of three different narrators and the way in which each witness’s account of the murder and the events leading up to it differed, either because of lapses of memory or deliberate deceit was interesting. However, I felt that the narrators didn’t come across as sufficiently distinctive. My main reservation about the book, though, was the author’s tendency to include a lot of unnecessary information about minor characters. Did we really need to know about the person one of the narrators sat next to on a plane, the name of a waitress in a restaurant or the details of ex-wives, girlfriends, etc? This actually started to annoy me. I wasn’t sure if the author was trying to flesh out the narrators’ back stories or just pad out the book. Although, I think the author was trying to communicate something sophisticated about the unreliability of memory, in the end unfortunately I don’t think the book did add up to much more than “who killed Tom, Dick or Harry” with the key piece of information that nailed the killer being a chance remark. I did want to find out who the killer was (and the motive) so that kept me reading through to the end.