If you’re looking for a crime fiction where one twist chases another that’s your choice. It’s one of those books where from the second page you start second-guessing yourself. As you know from the get-go that in the end nothing will be what it seemed at the beginning. And the author makes no mystery of that fact, it is there stated in the title.

I got this book from the How Novel subscription box. Every month you get a choice of four surprise titles, and you make your pick based on four adjectives describing the book and an illustration related to the plot. It always surprises me how difficult it is to make a choice based on so little information, but it certainly is fun.

The book is a book within a book, so within Twisted by Steve Cavanagh, we get Twisted by J.T. LeBeau. The said J.T. LeBeau is an extremely successful crime writer, whose fame is fuelled by his anonymity. He never revealed his identity to anyone including his publisher, and in fact, we don’t even know if it’s a ‘he’. This of a crime-writing Elena Ferrante. The problem is someone is getting close to revealing his identity and people start dying. Our cast of characters includes Paul and Maria, a couple whose marriage is on the rocks after the move to a small seaside town. There is a local country club waiter Daryl. We also have a local sheriff and his introverted second in command. 

Really for such a twisted book the cast of characters is quite limited. Which makes it even more difficult to pull off a convincing twist. Cavanagh in most cases succeeds. However, as with most crime books by starting to read it you in a way agree to suspend some of your critical thinking and become more gullible. That’s some of the fun of reading fiction, isn’t it? It’s just not meant to be too realistic very often. It draws from our life and then takes us on a wild ride.

I do have to admit though that at some point those relentless twists get a bit exhausting. You have to be on your toes the whole time, questioning every single thing you read and the brain just gets tired. Also the characters are only semi-developed, they mostly hinge on one main feature. 

All in all a very well-paced book, one to breeze through and not linger on too much. 

For sentient beings in the US of A, there were three things they feared above all others. A terrorist attack. A school shooting. And the American justice system. Not necessarily in that order.

Here are a few other opinions on this book:

FuelTheBlog

The Bookworm’s Fantasy

Ellie’s Bookish Blog

Photo by Violetta Kaszubowska