This book is about a writing class with a killer in its midst. It starts out slow, and then it builds. You’ll be half way through the book before it claims its first character.
There are no chapter titles (it’s just blank at the top), except for the first chapter (voiced with a mystery character) and the actual class meetings. The book is told in the eyes of the teacher of the class, Amy Gallup. She is an anti-social ex-author, and she is put into a position of responsibility over a collection of crude and insulting writing that has been going around the class, and even one delivered to one student in particular.
It begins to mount, and Amy is forced to tell the runners of the program what’s been going on, and they shut it down. But the story continues from there, because the students refuse to stop doing the class, and nudge Amy to continue teaching.
And so it goes, and they are forced to come together and make their own conclusions, to find this person (who they name The Sniper) and single them out.
This book is a thriller, with a slow pace, that keeps you guessing at every turn. I didn’t even realize, towards the end, that what I was reading was really the conclusion that it turned out to be. But it just goes to show how far astray you can go with all those twists and turns.
The book made sense once I got settled into it. Although, once my mind caught onto things a little quicker than the characters, but you can’t always trust that process, because later I came to a separate conclusion that turned out to be wrong.
It is a stand alone, but I would certainly consider reading another book by this author if I ever found it. There was a bit of swearing, so it would be mildly ill-recommended to younger readers. However, it isn’t gory, so it would still be good.
If you like the twists and turns of Rowling, and you wouldn’t mind reading more adult language and a non fantasy-style piece of fiction; this could be the book for you.
I would give this book at least four stars, and would recommend it to just about anyone who doesn’t mind the language, but especially to amateur writers, as it is particularly relevant to them.
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