I have various reasons for writing this review. I generally loathe fiction. I’m very wary of whodunits in particular. I usually find them far too shallow and worse, easy.
My mother was a professional radio writer and whodunits were the family business for a while. I was trained in the rules of writing whodunits from a very early age.
I’m also a Susie Dent fan. Susie Dent is perhaps the most understated woman on UK TV ever. She’s elegant, charming, and opaquely opalescent in the most likeable way. She could stonewall a stone wall, then be stunningly vivacious in the next breath. I’ve rarely if ever seen anyone who can laugh like her.
She made a true fan of me when she defined the entire history of the human race in four words in Susie Dent’s Rude Words. I think she paraphrased herself, by saying “Some twats lived on”. Hard to argue with that.
There were therefore plenty of good reasons to be interested in Guilty by Definition. I checked the Amazon sample, liked the writing style, and bought the hardback.
I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. I really didn’t.
Let’s get the literary stuff out of the way first.
This is a very good story that is easily adaptable to the screen. There are no hackneyed elements in this book. There are no prissy little “literary devices”. The inner dialogs of the characters are often difficult internal issues, stark, and self-accusative. An interesting touch in a whodunit.
Susie is a very competent, experienced writer. I hope she’ll forgive the use of the word “deft” in describing her style. She doesn’t muck around with verbal kitsch or soggy imagery. Everything is described clearly and without wasting space. There are 383 pages of solid protein in this book.
Do not skim this book.
You’ll definitely miss something, and inevitably something useful. Lexicography is her forte, and it’s in full flight in this book. The plot is based on lexicology. The meanings of words matter a lot.
The plot structure is good, and brutal in places. The story is set in Oxford, starting in the offices of the Clarendon English Dictionary, amid an infestation of lexicographers working on the dictionary. (There must be a collective noun, surely?)
The unsuspecting reader is instantly sledgehammered with a revelation almost at the very start. The revelation is about the disappearance of the lead character Martha’s sister Charlie over a decade earlier.
The first revelation is in code, using Shakespearian references. More coded revelations from the same sender arise, past and present, much to the resentment of Martha and many others. Why is this person sending them coded messages?
By the way, this is one of the best bits of third-person character development I think I’ve ever seen. There turns out to be a lot to know about Charlie that nobody knew.
By the middle of the book, you will note that exactly what happened to Charlie is now far more unclear than it was at the start. The book’s characters are as baffled as the reader.
The art of the whodunit is to get the reader guessing. She doesn’t leave you any choice. As more clues and witnesses get roped in, the suspicions ferment merrily, and you still have to guess what happens next.
The cardinal rule of the whodunit is that the reader must be able to make an accurate guess. That’s what Guilty by Definition is all about and does it well.
The mystery genre may consider itself well and truly Dented.
