by B. M. Gill
First published 1985
Detective Chief Inspector Tom Maybridge receives an unusual assignment: lecturing at a seminar for the Golden Guillotine Club, a gathering of crime writers. The irony isn't lost on him as he prepares to address authors who spend their days crafting fictional murders. But fiction turns deadly real when the club's president is found murdered during the seminar. Maybridge shifts from lecturer to investigator, working to solve an actual crime among people who make their living imagining them. The detective must navigate the peculiar world of mystery writers, where everyone knows how murders work in theory but someone has put that knowledge into deadly practice. As Maybridge pursues the killer, he discovers that the line between fictional crime and real violence can disappear entirely. The case forces him to consider whether the writers' intimate knowledge of murder methods makes them more likely suspects or more valuable allies in his investigation.
Genres: mystery, crime, thriller, detective
Vibes: suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: amateur-detective, fish-out-of-water
176 pages · Hardcover