A STUNNING DEBUT FROM YOUR NEXT FAVORITE MYSTERY WRITER • Rupert's 30th birthday party is a black-tie dinner at the Kentish Town McDonald's—catered with cocaine and expensive champagne. The morning after, his girlfriend Clemmie is found murdered on Hampstead Heath, a single stiletto heel jutting from under a bush.
“A perfectly modern whodunnit.” —Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author of I Will Find You
Who killed Clemmie? Was it the blithe, sociopathic boyfriend? His impossibly wealthy godmother? The gallery owner with whom Clemmie was having an affair? Or was it the result of something else entirely?
All the party-goers have alibis. Naturally. This investigation is going to be about aristocrats and Classics degrees, Instagram influencers and whose father knows who.
Or is it 'whom'? Detective Caius Beauchamp isn't sure. He's sharply dressed, smart, and thoroughly modern—he discovers Clemmie's body on his early morning jog. As he searches for the dark truth beneath the luxurious life of these London socialites, a wall of staggering wealth and privilege threatens to shut down his investigation before it's even begun. Can Caius peer through the tangled mess of connections in which the other half live—and die—before the case is wrenched from his hands? Bitingly funny, full of shocking twists, and all too familiar, The Other Half is a truly stunning debut.
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Release date
November 21, 2023 -
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780593685952
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780593685952
- File size: 2599 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Publisher's Weekly
September 18, 2023
Vassell’s crackling debut skewers England’s current crop of gilded youth. Rich, handsome Rupert Beauchamp, who’s about to inherit a title, throws himself a lavish 30th birthday party in London’s buzzy Kentish Town: it’s an ironic black-tie affair at the local McDonald’s, catered with buckets of champagne and mountains of cocaine. The next morning, while British-Jamaican detective Caius Beauchamp (no relation to Rupert) is out jogging, he happens upon the corpse of Rupert’s influencer girlfriend, Clemmie, in Hampstead Heath. Given that all the party attendees have alibis, the obvious suspect is Nell, a beautiful editor at a literary press whom Rupert has long planned to leave Clemmie for. Nell, however, has grown ambivalent about Rupert and his social circle, so Caius pursues other leads as well. His search takes him through a web of overprivileged suspects on whom the detective casts a half-contemptuous, half-envious eye, and eventually delivers him to the doorstep of a murderous, elite conspiracy. Vassell gleefully plunges into the underbelly of 21st-century entitlement, creating vivid sketches of aimless young Londoners gorging on designer clothes and designer drugs—sometimes at the expense of her core mystery. Still, as a diamond-sharp satirical whodunit in the vein of Liane Moriarty, this succeeds. Agent: Jon Wood, RCW Literary. -
Kirkus
November 1, 2023
Class lines morph into clash lines when British aristocrats and police face off in this dead-on debut. On the night before an Instagram influencer is found dead, Rupert Beauchamp, heir to a baronetcy, holds a tawdry black-tie 30th birthday bash at a London McDonald's, where guests wash down fast food with champagne and coke. The dead woman turns out to be Rupert's girlfriend, Clemmie O'Hara, whose body is discovered on Hampstead Heath by DI Caius Beauchamp (no relation to Rupert, but it's an intriguing coincidence that eventually explains a lot about Caius). Clemmie's death is convenient for the nasty Rupert because he's always loved Nell Waddingham, whom he can't marry because she's not posh enough. Nell works in publishing and adores classic novels, especially Jane Austen's, which she loves to read and post about. She's Vassell's most perfectly wrought character and, along with Caius, one of the few likable ones. On a recent trip to Greece with Rupert and Clemmie, she experienced a terrible act of violence (only hinted at later in the book) that she can't seem to understand or process. Caius is clear-eyed about what happened to her and wants justice for her and Clemmie. He's not afraid to set his sights on Rupert, even though his elite-enamored boss tells him to back off. Rupert, like all the other aimless upper-class millennials in this novel, can buy his way out of pretty much any criminal behavior, but will he get away with murder? There are plenty of other people in Clemmie's circle with strong motives, and Vassell serves them up with gimlet-eyed precision. This is a sturdy police procedural whose plot is sometimes knocked off kilter by Vassell's frequent sendups of her morally bankrupt characters, but the forthright Caius is a beacon of justice who makes this debut shine. Race and privilege light the fuse in this classics-laced whodunit.COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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