This book is bad. (Bet you didn't see that coming.) Initially I wanted my entire review to be "Unlike the author of The Postscript Murders, I won't waste your time. After 300 pages of nonsense, the culprit is caught because the police finally check the security cameras. Don't bother." (That would've been the snarky zinger, by the way.) But there's so much wrong with this book, I need to get it all off my chest. Buckle up.
I don't even know how to describe The Postscript Murders. It's just... empty. It goes from plot point to plot point, no matter how ridiculous the transition, in an attempt to make you think it's mysterious and exciting, yet comes across as superficial and shallow. The book felt hollow as I was reading, and the inane resolution (alluded to in the previous paragraph) just confirmed that there was nothing behind the curtain. Nothing. A corpse turns up, the characters run around looking into people possibly related, the culprit is revealed, the end. The facial elements of a murder mystery are present and the book dutifully goes through each of them in turn, but there's no substance or trace of intelligence undergirding the story.
Close Enough to Kill was the worst book I've reviewed until now, and even there I could see how there was a chance that it wasn't totally impossible that the romance and erotica could maybe appeal to a non-zero number of persons, in theory. But I legitimately can't see what anyone would enjoy in The Postscript Murders. Alright, that's not entirely true. Maybe they like the spectacle of murder, or just vibing on a road trip with friends. But then why not read a book that has that element you enjoy but does it well??
The book opens with the death of Peggy Smith, a 90 year old woman. (Peggy Smith—PS—Postscript. Get it? Congratulations, you've experienced the second-most clever idea of the book.) Everyone thinks it was natural causes because, y'know, she was 90. But Peggy's carer, Natalka, goes to the police to report Peggy's death as suspicious because... Peggy was acknowledged in some books.
I had to stop for a few seconds after writing that, because actually typing the words out reminded me how asinine it was.
You know how at the beginning of the book there will be a dedication or acknowledgement or something of that sort? Peggy was listed there in some books. And that's what made the death of a 90 year old woman "suspicious." To be more precise, the books were murder mysteries (GASP), which is what made them suspicious. Because... I don't know. It's just stupid. But it's the plot of the book, so, no matter how silly it is to start investigating Peggy's death, we do it and it turns out there's more to it.
I want to pause here, though, because I'm not done digging into this moment yet. It was these acknowledgments that got Natalka to report the death to the police, so you'd think there'd be a lot of them, right? Well, the fact that I'm asking this should give you the answer. As we learn later in the book, Peggy is acknowledged by a grand total of (drumroll) three novelists. One of them only has one book. Another only has four books, and only acknowledges Peggy in three of them—and only refers to her as "PS," so it isn't even clear that it's referring to Peggy. Granted the third author is relatively prolific, but still—it's basically that author's books and then one more that acknowledge "Peggy Smith."
So Natalka apparently wandered into Peggy's apartment, started randomly looking through Peggy's books, out of all the books available just happened to pick the books by these authors, looked at the dedication page of all things, and thought that the fact that these authors acknowledged Peggy (who, again, was 90 years old) made Peggy's death suspicious.
What am I supposed to think? Elderly victims can be interesting because they naturally bring up the question of why take out someone so close to death's door anyway, but that's not the hook here; it's not clear that Peggy was murdered. The hook is that Peggy was acknowledged in some books.
Oh wait, not just some "books." Some murder mysteries. My mistake.
Alright, so there was one other thing. They discover a business card among Peggy's possessions describing herself as a "murder consultant." Scandalous! A murder consultant, murdered? There must be more to Peggy's death after all! What could it mean? The characters try to come up with all sorts of explanations. For some reason nobody suggests that Peggy helped mystery novelists develop the plot for their novels. Even though, y'know, literally the main other "interesting" point about this case is the fact that Peggy was acknowledged in a bunch handful of mystery novels.
Unfortunately all good things must come to an end. (I suppose that's why this book is several hundred pages long.) Despite all the wild speculating, the characters eventually seem to tacitly accept that the "murder consultant" was nothing more than a plot adviser. But wait! This begs another, incredibly compelling question: how did a mild-mannered retired civil servant know so much about murders and killing people?
One of my favorite scenes in the book is when the characters discuss this perplexing problem in front of the bookshelves that used to hold Peggy's extensive collection of murder mystery novels.
So after Natalka just happens to find all the acknowledgments (and thinks they're suspicious, for whatever reason), while she and her friend Benedict are investigating Peggy's apartment a gunman just happens to show up, but the object the gunman came for (a rare, out-of-print book) just happens to be right inside the door so the gunman nabs it and runs, and then Benedict just happens to spot this (rare, out-of-print) book (that he wasn't even looking for) the next day when he just happens to wander into a used book store.
I'll admit there are some ideas that are not wholly uninteresting (for instance, why would a gunman want a random book?), but putting them in the middle of a parade of silly coincidences makes me think they're going to be just as silly.
...Actually, I realized literally as I was writing this, that the gunman could have just taken that book when they were, uh, previously in Peggy's apartment (I'm not going to explicitly spell out the circumstances—but it's the most obvious one), so never mind, I take it back. It's all trash. Well, the idea of a criminal wanting a particular book can be interesting, but the execution is shallow and thoughtless for the sake of making things "exciting."
The characters find a threatening message among Peggy's things, and one of the main links among all the victims is that they each have received a similar message. Near the end of the book we discover the messages are completely irrelevant and totally benign. (A murder mystery needs red herrings, right? And you don't want the readers to see through it, so better make it as improbable as possible and don't leave a trace that could suggest it's actually a false clue.)
Here's another coincidence to add to the pile from earlier: Peggy thought the death of a certain acquaintance of hers was suspicious, and had put a clue towards that theory in the book the gunman took. The reason the clue was in that book and the reason the gunman took that book are utterly unrelated. (If you like, you can also take the convoluted game of telephone it takes the protagonists to learn the fact that Peggy thought this death was suspicious and had a clue hidden in the book as a bonus coincidence.)
Also, Peggy thought this death of her friend was suspicious and has a theory for it... so she gives one random person a vague hint towards a vague clue she left. Instead of, y'know, going to the police. (The reason given is that she had no proof. After all, it's not like it's the police's job to investigate crimes or anything; you need to develop an ironclad case yourself before reporting someone to the authorities.)
More coincidences (I need to be vague about these, sorry): Out of the entirety of Great Britain, Person A coincidentally runs into Person B... twice. And this does double duty as a plot hole as well, since I have no idea why they were even looking for Person B the first time. They have a particular reason for the second meeting, but if they had this reason at the time of the first meeting then the way they approached the first meeting makes no sense, and if they didn't have this reason for the first meeting... Well, there isn't really any other possible reason for that first meeting.
There is a pair of fictional books in the story that have certain similarities to them, and these similarities seem relatively straightforward but it takes the characters (who have read both books) a while to notice these similarities.
A certain character fulfills the same conditions that made the culprit target the other victims, yet this character is never in danger and they never even hint that they would have been. Even though they'd be a prime target, given they fit the exact criteria the culprit was actively murdering people over.
Remember at the beginning of the review how I mentioned that they catch the culprit just by watching surveillance footage? Well, near the end of the book Harbinder (the main character, whom I've neglected to mention until now because that's just how important she is to the plot) makes a comment that forensic analysis of the other crime scenes would provide evidence of the culprit. So, again, what was the point of the hundreds and hundreds of pages we had to go through if everything would just get resolved with forensics anyway? It's a minor remark that makes the book doubly-pointless.
I'm not sure exactly how the victims were killed. Like I know the method, but logistically speaking, I'm not sure. Did the killer just go up, say "Hey, so, I'm gonna kill you now" and then have the victim reply "Nice, sounds good" and then fall over without any resistance or anything? Because I feel like that's the best explanation here.
One mystery that shows up late in the book is an unsigned manuscript a publisher receives that has the exact same plot as the next project one of the victims was going to write. We learn who wrote the manuscript, but not why it had the same plot as that victim's next idea. This plot point is so bizarre to me because it's introduced late, doesn't affect anything, and goes nowhere, and yet is still literally half-baked.
Partway through the book the characters fortuitously run into another ally in their hunt for Peggy's killer. However, he remains secretive about how he knew Peggy. The book harps on this fact, and the characters try to pry the answer out of him to no avail. Except the way he met Peggy is totally mundane and no reason is given for why he was so secretive about it.
We're supposed to deduce a character's handedness because they're able to type even with one of their wrists broken. Has Elly Griffiths ever actually used a computer? You can still type with a wrist brace on your dominant hand. There is one and only one scenario where it is appropriate to use a keyboard with one hand, and unfortunately that situation does not pop up in this book.
On the topic of funny internet videos, this is a great time to watch Episode 1 of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series because it offers insight into not one, but two flaws of The Postscript Murders. The first insight shows up at 0:25, when Kaiba thinks to himself, "Rare card? That sounds vague enough to be the Blue-Eyes White Dragon." This is essentially how the culprit is identified. (Y'know, besides the direct video footage and "forensics.")
Our second insight occurs at 1:36, after Kaiba rips up the Blue-Eyes White Dragon. "What the heck did you do that for?!" Joey demands. "So that it could never be used against me," Kaiba coolly replies. And this is essentially the motive in The Postscript Murders. The issue with this is revealed in the next line, when Yugi asks, "In that case why not just tear up every card in the whole world?" Of course, Kaiba has no true rebuttal to this, merely telling Yugi to "Shut up and duel me," and The Postscript Murders even kind of admits that its motive is a bit wonky.
And if all these plot errors and missteps weren't enough for you, there are some objective editing errors as well, with characters changing names for a page or a paragraph. (C'mon, how hard is it to do ctrl + f when you change your character's name midway through writing?)
...Okay, I think I got it all out of my system. Phew.
Let's talk about Harbinder Kaur a bit. She's a gay Sikh female second-generation immigrant of color. If someone wanted to be edgy and cynical, they might try to claim that Griffiths is just trying to score lots of woke points (you know that's the term they'd use) with Harbinder. But it's not mere tokenism. I can state with confidence that these are attributes Harbinder just happens to have, and are not her personality.
Unfortunately, the reason I can make that claim is because Harbinder doesn't have a personality. She's sardonic, she likes Panda Pop, and... that's literally all I can say without resorting to a list of synonyms for sardonic. I don't usually care that much about the detective character, and it's not that I dislike Harbinder, I just... don't feel anything for or about her because she's such a non-entity.
Aside from a few lines of internal monologue, Harbinder's status as a gay Sikh female second-generation immigrant of color never really comes into play or affects the plot. Griffiths does not need to justify giving all or any of those attributes to her protagonist, but if you want a story about being a gay Sikh female second-generation immigrant of color, you'll need to look elsewhere.
In a way, I think this is the best type of representation: a story centered around someone in a marginalized group whose status as a member of that group informs their identity but does not comprise their personality. Kaur just needed to star in a book that didn't have its plot scraped off the bottom of a gutter.
The book also follows a trio of amateur sleuths: the beautiful and exotic Natalka, the bookish ex-monk Benedict, and an old gay dude named Edwin. I don't have much to say about them. They're agreeable—they're the kind of people I wouldn't mind going on a road trip with—but I wasn't invested in them and I didn't particularly care about what they did or what happened to them. They were just three random people, nothing more and nothing less.
Alright, that's really the end. I'm all snarked out. If my thoughts on The Postscript Murder aren't already clear, then it's probably the perfect book for you.
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