A thoroughly enjoyable mystery story with all the tropes and pleasures of a golden age detective story ... Well-written and pacy, inflected by the original characters and setting but otherwise unconstrained by them.
Delightful ... Anderson-Wheeler writes in a voice that is fun to read, even as she stays true to the character traits Fitzgerald created a century ago ... Fitzgerald scholars may find it all frivolous — nothing but fan fiction that effectively negates the plot of the original — but readers who either don’t care about that or who just want to spend more time with these characters will be rewarded.
Anderson-Wheeler isn’t the stylist that Fitzgerald was (not many are) but she understands his characters. That understanding informs Gambit, which smartly recognizes that star-crossed lovers Jay and Daisy were never meant to be, even with Tom conveniently out of the picture ... If The Great Gatsby is going to turn into a The Avengers-style bit of intellectual property, with spinoffs of spinoffs of spinoffs — and, clearly, it already is — then The Gatsby Gambit is an example of how well that could go ... Anderson-Wheeler obviously loves and has been thoughtful about the source material, and she has written a novel that respects its elder while, like a boat against the current, she takes its characters in a completely new direction.
With an ambitious premise for a debut novel, Wheeler revises Fitzgerald’s classic with reassuring authenticity and refreshing zest to deliver a thoroughly satisfying, coy murder mystery. F. Scott would approve.
This novel pays homage to the classic with a fresh point of view that will please Gatsby fans and mystery readers. Both Gigi and the novel are clever and breathe new life into one of the definitive novels of the 20th century.
Featuring much of the glamour and sparkle of Fitzgerald’s original, this reprise of Gatsby’s cautionary tale also revisits the distressing realities behind the glitz.
Deftly subverting romantic notions about money, power and freedom that still stand today, The Gatsby Gambit is a sparkling homage to, and reinvention of, a world American readers have lionized for generations.
