This book has been getting a lot of buzz lately! I must honestly say that I while I found the premise to be incredibly unique and original, the execution of the premise left a bit to be desired. I ended up giving this book 3 stars because there were some decent twists. While things are solved in the book (see spoilers below) there are some things that could be left open to interpretation. I will bring those up as well.
Murder in the Family is a September 2023 release by William Morrow
I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book. All opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links, see disclosures for more detail.
About the Book:
It was a case that gripped the nation. In December 2003, Luke Ryder, the stepfather of acclaimed filmmaker Guy Howard (then aged 10), was found dead in the garden of their suburban family home.
Luke Ryder’s murder has never been solved. Guy Howard’s mother and two half-sisters were in the house at the time of the murder—but all swear they saw nothing. Despite a high-profile police investigation and endless media attention, no suspect was ever charged.
But some murder cases are simply too big to forget…
Now comes the sensational new streaming series Infamous, dedicated to investigating—and perhaps cracking—this famous cold case. Years later a group of experts re-examine the evidence – with shocking results. Does the team know more than they’ve been letting on?
True crime lovers and savvy readers, you can review the evidence and testimony at the same time as the experts. But can you solve the case before they do?
My Spoiler-Free Review:
Underwhelming. Could have been so much better.
First, I’ll comment that I think this book should be read in print only. Maybe would be passable as an audiobook but electronically some of it is nearly impossible to read. The mixed media text/newspaper/reddit-style posts/etc are incredibly tiny and even when magnified you can’t get them large enough. I was able to decipher what they said, so the formatting had no bearing on my rating for this book, I just recommend print if you’re going to give it a go.
This is a book presented mostly as a transcript of a six episode true crime series. In 2003, Guy Howard was ten years old and his stepfather Luke Ryder was murdered. The case went unsolved. Guy is now co-producing this series, bringing together a group of experts who will dig deep into the cold case in an attempt to solve it after twenty years.
The concept is awesome, but I wasn’t overly impressed by the execution. The whole thing comes across as major telling and no showing. It’s all transcripts of a show, complete with closed-caption style descriptors of what their actions were (Laughing ruefully, sighing heavily, standing in front of the whiteboard). Then, coupled with a giant cast of people who I couldn’t keep straight much of the time, there were way too many contrived “coincidences” that seemed to pop up when the author needed to move the plot forward. There were even two characters with Alzheimers/dementia who conveniently couldn’t contribute necessary information to the case.
There are some decent twists, and one or two of them really surprised me. I liked the book because it’s a unique concept, but it does have some issues for me with the plot. When the ultimate resolution to the case is revealed I was kind of rolling my eyes, it was just not believable at all, first that it happened that way in the first place and second that it was covered up for twenty years. If you can suspend your disbelief that this could actually happen, you will probably enjoy this novel that reads a bit like true crime.
As a side note:
One thing that really bugged me about this book was the fact that in 2003, cell phone technology was in its infancy. The reliance on cell phone/texting evidence from the case was too much for an era when only 50% of the population had them and texting was fairly primitive, not to mention costly. You paid per text back then so you didn’t text unless there was a good reason. Every time the “checking the cell phone records” was brought up I cringed.
Spoilers Below! You’ve Been Warned!
So…
The first big twist is that Luke Ryder was not really Luke Ryder. He was Jonah McKenna from Canada, he faked his death as a teenager and went on to be a serial impersonator/con artist. The actual Luke Ryder was living in Australia and apparently killed someone in a hit and run accident. He took off to Beruit (sure, that’s where we all go I guess) and was killed in a bus accident, where Jonah (who was actually impersonating someone named Eric at the time) took his passport and took over his identity.
We find some of this out, at least the impersonation part, when American police detective Bill Serafini presents it after he takes a trip to the US. However, it is later revealed that Bill had already been working on this case and he already knew about the impersonation long before it was revealed on the show.
Soon, we come to discover that Nick, the producer, had chosen all of the “experts” due to their ties or supposed ties to the case. Everyone had something they were hiding.
A man named Ian Wilson had been in line to inherit Luke’s grandmother’s money. Then “Luke” shows up out of the blue and claims the inheritance. Ian had come to the house that night to confront “Luke.” Luke falls down the stairs and Ian leaves.
Amelie comes home early from the movies. Guy is standing over Luke’s body covered in blood, his cricket bat by his side. She takes him inside, cleans him up, puts his clothes and hers into the wash. This is when Maura comes home and she thinks all along that Amelie was the one who killed “Luke.”
It is then revealed that Guy was the actual killer, but he forgot? Dissociated? Something, but he didn’t remember he did it. Supposedly because he had seen his father die of a heart attack in front of him, his brain couldn’t handle it.
Later, Guy ends up dead by an apparent suicide, but a female nurse was seen leaving his apartment so we are left to assume that Jonah’s sister killed him. His watch ended up on Jonah’s grave, so I feel like she took it as a tribute.
What I Thought Was Going to Happen:
I thought that it was going to turn out that Jonah/Luke wasn’t really dead. Since it was made clear multiple times that the face was completely beaten beyond recognition, I thought that it would turn out that the body wasn’t “Luke” and that he had gone on the run again. Alas, it was not meant to be unless we can interpret the ending differently. I read a Reddit post where the person was convinced that maybe Jonah/Luke had become Ian and killed Ian, but we won’t know that for sure and it definitely appeared that Guy was the one we were supposed to believe was the killer and that it was Jonah who was dead.
