“The people you love weren’t algebra: to be calculated, subtracted, or held at arm’s length across a decimal point.”
Yesterday, I was by a random street stall filled to the brim with pirated copies of books and spotted the cover of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder. Immediately intrigued by the cover and the premise, I decided to buy it and I'm truly grateful because Holly Jackson has weaved magic with this book.
The novel follows Pippa (Pip) Fitz-Amobi, an A-Level student who ambitiously sets about solving the closed Andie Bell case, a murder that occurred five years ago that shook the town of Little Kilton. Andie's boyfriend Sal Singh was declared guilty for the crime, but Pip can't help but believe in Sal's possible innocence. This belief leads her through discovering the twisted web of lies and deceit built by the people in her small hometown she thought she knew...
Plot-wise, the book takes the angle of any murder mystery, a simple whodunnit. Was it truly Sal, or was it someone else? Yet what Jackson does so brilliantly is carefully turning the spindle of intricate details that build into the plot narrative, whilst still making the story fast-paced and easily palatable for the reader. The novel is also differentiated from other murder mysteries with the melange of different types of text displayed within its pages, there are interviews, transcripts, visual mind-maps and so on that gives A Good Girl's Guide to Murder its own unique charm.
Pip as a character is absolutely brilliant, she is smart and determined, and besides her affinity for solving murder mysteries, her one-liners and sarcastic witticisms truly make her pop (or pip) off the page. Her strength and willingness to go all the way in search of the truth can also be attributed to Ravi Singh, her 'partner-in-crime', and also Sal's younger brother who hopes for nothing more than being able to reinstate innocence to his brother's name.
Ravi is the perfect complement to Pip's personality, and the duo's partnership throughout the novel is what makes it all the more thrilling to read. Their scintillating banter and their escapades of breaking into houses for evidence bring about a more light-hearted angle to the novel.
All in all, I'd highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a quick, brilliantly executed murder mystery novel that will leave you revelling in the satisfaction of a job well done once the last page is turned.
Comments