Matt McAvoy Book Review

An interesting book and a novel premise.  This entire novella takes place in a police interview, its whole story unfolding through the main character’s narrative.  I’m not sure how much of Brown’s bio is intended to be serious, and how much tongue-in-cheek, as he would seem to suggest that much of the unnamed first-person character is based on his own personality and indeed his own experiences – not too much, I hope, because while the protagonist is indeed interesting, I wouldn’t call him endearing in any way.  Though clearly of some intellect, in perhaps moments of contrived cleverness, the overall murder-mystery in this book is not what one would call particularly complex; rather more Murder She Wrote than Sherlock Holmes.  The main character is a touch too arrogant to be likeable; my experience of highly intelligent people is that they tend to be more tolerant of their intellectual inferiors, preferring to engage on a level plain, because they know this is likely to be holistically more beneficial than antagonising them, which the interesting detective seems wont to doing.  In the book, this would appear to be excused by the hint of suggestion that he has some degree of spectrum disorder – which is, of course, a common characteristic of all the best puzzle-solving sleuths.  Not sure why Brown opted for the comic cursive, but it certainly helped set the scene, giving the narrative a similar feel to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

I enjoyed the book generally.  It was an entertaining way to spend an hour or two, with a warm and cosy prose; it may be suited to a longish commute or a shortish journey.  To be honest, I would have liked a little more from Brown – perhaps a whole book of short detective mysteries involving this character; that said, a novella probably maximized the limits of this particular case.  There were quite a few grammatical errors in the book, which I have to say honestly undermined its first-person genius premise a touch.  But overall, I’d definitely like to see more from this author, and hope that in other titles he infuses the real rarity of unique ingenuity in his cases – I’m sure he has many in mind.