My Five Word TL:DR Review: Novel Concept with Unlikable Characters

I enjoyed Ink Ribbon Red although I wouldn’t say I loved it and I think part of that is on me.  I’ve read a few murder mysteries recently and I think I needed to space them out with different books in between, as it is I think I’ve read three back to back and so I think this has left me feeling a bit jaded.  That being said I think Ink Ribbon Red is an interesting concept and it certainly kept me intrigued to see how everything would pan out.

The premise for this is old friends meeting up for a long boozy birthday weekend.  This is a bunch of people who have been friends since their university years.  They now lead different lives, some more successful than others, or married, etc.  Basically, if you threw this group of people together now, unknown to each other, they probably wouldn’t become friends, but a decade or more of friendship and shared history holds the group together even if they’re a little bit less enamoured of each other than they were years ago and they have secrets and hidden resentments just waiting to bubble to the surface.  Plan a party, let the cocktails flow, get everyone to tell a story, what could possibly go wrong.  Well, murder, that’s what could definitely go wrong.

So, we have six people in total.  They meet every year at Anatol’s house – basically his recently deceased father was quite wealthy and owned a country home in Wiltshire.  The group meet there every year for a birthday bash and are determined to meet for one last time (the house likely being sold after this last get together).  They’re an odd bunch of characters.  Anatol is very aloof. I found him difficult to get along with.  He’s unorganised, forgets to pick up his friends, doesn’t make any plans and has decided that the one thing he wants for his birthday is for everyone to write a short murder story.  The rest of the group are Dean – an engineer who leaves his wife at home suffering from a cold (but more likely she just doesn’t want to get together with this group), Phoebe – single, a teacher, Maya – an artist who can be a bit forthright bordering on rude, Marcin a rather well to do finance broker of sorts, and Janaka who will be arriving to the party late returning from an interview abroad.

The murder stories – this is actually a really clever part of the story although I didn’t realise what was actually happening at first.  Their stories are interspersed with the real story and you’re never quite sure which is which.  I liked this element.  It soon becomes clear what was happening as some of the stories were quite OTT but at first I was definitely a bit taken aback.  Each person has drawn two names – one to be the victim and the other the killer and they are all to write a story.  The interesting thing about this is that people tend to write about what they know and so a lot of secrets and deceptions are going to be woven into these little tales.

On top of this, Anatol’s father has only just been buried, there’s a very sombre mood, as you would expect, and this is not helped by everyone’s being in such a strange place.  I mean, literally, I struggled to see why these people even consider themselves friends.  They’re the oddest bunch of people, their dialogue is snappy, their idea of fun is to just drink all day long and loll about and clearly somebody amongst the party is trying to blackmail one or more of the others.

Anyway, I don’t really want to say too much more because of spoilers so by way of summary.  We have a group of friends, not really too friendly, blackmail and a bunch of murder mysteries that all sneak into the storyline throwing you into momentary doubt followed by one of the characters murdering one of the others – although at first, given what’s already taken place, you’re still not sure just what exactly happened.

I enjoyed the writing.  The setting is very Agatha Christie(ish).  It’s the old ‘friends with resentment’ getting together with dire consequences.

I didn’t figure out the actual ending.  I enjoyed the stories that were written by the partygoers and incorporated into the actual storyline.  I did feel that the ending was a bit less than it could have been – although the actual finale was crazy and has made me feel like I need to go back and reexamine everything – perhaps I’m mistaken about what really happened.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks.  The above is my own opinion.

My rating 3.5 of 5 stars