A group of friends gather at an Airbnb on New Year’s Eve. It is Benjamin’s birthday, and his sister Abigail is throwing him a jazz-age Murder Mystery themed party. As the night plays out, champagne is drunk, hors d’oeuvres consumed, and relationships forged, consolidated or frayed. Someone kisses the wrong person; someone else’s heart is broken. In the morning, all of them wake up — except Benjamin.
Terrific ... Cunning ... A witty, knowing homage to classic detective fiction, but also a deeply sensitive examination of the loneliness and confusion of grief ... Readers will enjoy the Easter eggs hidden in the underbrush ... Serve[s] as a bracing meditation on the different ways we perceive death (and fiction).
Entertainingly avant-garde ... Ms. Hegarty is after more than a simulation of golden age mystery in the 21st century, mixing in elements that suggest a work of metafiction as written by the Marx Brothers ... Poignant ... Shows how the true mysteries of death and life can elude the consolations of genre fiction —even as Ms. Hegarty’s audacious concoction transcends the limitations of form.
Deliriously slippery ... Devilishly clever ... Having already pulled the rug from under us, Hegarty gradually begins to unspool the truly satisfying twist to her novel ... [A] fiendishly elegant jigsaw puzzle of a book ... Not every aspect of the novel works perfectly: obscured behind the screen of the novel’s literary game, it’s possible that Abigail’s world doesn’t come fully to life ... But when it comes to whether you’re in the hands of someone phenomenally talented here, who has constructed something entirely original, there’s no mystery.
