Goodreads blurb: “‘You shouldn’t be here. It’s too late… ’ 

These, heard over the phone, were the last recorded words of successful celebrity-divorce lawyer Richard Pryce, found bludgeoned to death in his bachelor pad with a bottle of wine – a 1982 Chateau Lafite worth £3,000, to be precise.

Odd, considering he didn’t drink. Why this bottle? And why those words? And why was a three-digit number painted on the wall by the killer? And, most importantly, which of the man’s many, many enemies did the deed?

Baffled, the police are forced to bring in Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, the author Anthony, who’s really getting rather good at this murder investigation business.

But as Hawthorne takes on the case with characteristic relish, it becomes clear that he, too, has secrets to hide. As our reluctant narrator becomes ever more embroiled in the case, he realises that these secrets must be exposed – even at the risk of death…”

My Review

I read this book through The Pigeonhole, a free online book club and read it with other readers on the web. It was split into 10 parts, called staves, that I read through the nifty Pigeonhole App. I was able to leave comments throughout and interact with the other readers.

Even though this is the second book in the Daniel Hawthorne series, this was my first outing with the author and his detective acquaintance, and I really enjoyed it.

I’d recently heard the author on the Simon Mayo’s Books of The Year podcast, so I was able to read this with his voice in my head, making it an even better reading experience. I thought it was a fun way to write a murder mystery, putting himself in the story and trying to work out who the murderer was.

I didn’t work it out, even coming up with some wild theories towards the end, nothing new there you might add!

I’ll definitely be reading the next one in the series. I’d also like to read the book before this as I’d love to know how the author got mixed up with the enigmatic Daniel Hawthorne.