What if the murder you had to solve was your own? Lou is a happily married mother of an adorable toddler. She's also the victim of a local serial killer. Recently brought back to life and returned to her grieving family by a government project, she is grateful for this second chance. But as the new Lou re-adapts to her old routines, and as she bonds with other female victims, she realizes that disturbing questions remain about what exactly preceded her death and how much she can really trust those around her.
[Williams] deftly swirls science fiction and domestic suspense plotlines into this fresh and unpredictable tale ... Imbued with a sharp feminist consciousness, My Murder cheekily invokes and subverts the conventional serial-killer-stalking-terrified-women plot ... My Murder shakes up the same-old, same-old conventions of every genre it touches and has a ton of fun doing so.
Williams performs a number of clever tricks with the narration, and not least of these is that sad-sack Louise is a consistently winning perspective. In the beginning, the writing has a comic pizazz — you can imagine Natasha Lyonne reading the audiobook — but it grows deeper, darker and more melancholy as the book goes on, the self-possessed wisecracking revealing itself, as it often does, as the defense mechanism of a lonely and disconnected soul ... The subtle science-fiction elements only serve to deepen this sense of alienation. Williams’s near-future world takes familiar technology and makes it even more pervasive and isolating ... one of those rare emotionally intelligent books that are also fun reads, and it even manages to perform two or three plot turns that are so masterly that they would make Ira Levin blush. You can read the ending as happy — or as existential horror, as I do — but in any case it’s a book that’s going to keep readers turning pages late into the night.
My Murder engages with a violent subject without gore, and probes how technology infuses our days and engages our attention, often without our awareness. The plot is certainly rich and appealing, but Williams’ layered considerations are even more compelling and yet never heavy-handed.
