My Book Review of 'A Neighbor's Guide to Murder'

Hi. Today I’m reviewing A Neighbor’s Guide to Murder. A Neighbor’s Guide to Murder. Check out that cozy looking cover. Don’t let that cover fool you. There are some very serious themes running through this book. What happens? It’s about a woman in her 70s, which is interesting because I happen to just have hit 70. So I can read this as someone who should empathize with this person, which I do actually, to a great extent. I know what it’s like to live with a disability, that’s for sure. Yeah, she walks with a cane. She has difficulty getting around, but she’s capable of taking care of herself. And she gets involved with a situation involving a neighbor who has an allegation against the person she was living with, makes an allegation. I’m not going to go into details. I’m going to let you read the book and find out for yourself.

Okay. I’ll tell you a little bit. She claims that she was living rent-free in the apartment next door with a man who was taking sex instead of money as rent. In other words, she was saying things like, “He could do whatever he wanted with me. That was the arrangement.” All this kind of stuff. Very victim sounding stuff. And well, let’s just say that a little bit of checking should have been done. A little bit of fact checking, a little bit of research. And as a result of various bad decisions, this woman ends up. Well, I won’t tell you, but it’s not good.

There are themes of what the media does to distort stories, how the media is capable of distorting stories, why it’s capable of distorting stories, often because of the sources themselves, often because it plays a certain way and the people want to know more. The complete chaos that can result when a person makes an accusation publicly without really knowing the facts.

And you find yourself questioning everybody in this book, in a sense, the story you’re getting from everybody really. Because in the end, well, let’s just say you start to really, really doubt this woman is still sane or she’s still capable of doing the right thing. I don’t know. Saying the right thing, or understanding what’s going on. I don’t know. It’s a very bleak sort of ending.

But I recommend it. I recommend this book really. It’s a compulsive read. When I got to a certain point, it’s like, I didn’t want to put it down. I wanted to keep reading it. And yeah, boy, there are all sorts of. Her daughter is a social media influencer who is in this whole trad-wife thing that she does. And the mother just can’t stand that. She’s a liberal. She’s like an old hippie or something. So anyway, it is a very good book. So the themes of gender roles in marriage, one guy actually kind of comes out and says it. Oh, whether you’re a hooker or someone who’s living in a house, sex for rent or a wife, what’s the difference? Well, there is a difference or there should be.

Anyway, I thought that was interesting. I thought the themes of innocent until proven guilty–hello!–were in there. It’s like the media, the way things are reported, the hysteria when somebody makes an accusation and everybody just assumes guilty. I hate that. I hate when that happens. I just want to shake people who are just going around assuming that everything they read in the paper or on the internet is true. Anyway, even the internet in a sense plays a role in this. Text messages, banking, the research that Gwen, the protagonist, ends up having to do. It’s all very interesting. So I do highly recommend the book. Yes, it does have a downer ending, but sometimes the best stories do, unfortunately. All right. Take care and I’ll be seeing you.

For some reason, I was reminded of Jim Thompson. “There is only one story. Nothing is as it seems.”

I think that’s the quote. It really applies to this book. I wonder what Jim Thompson would think of this story. I wonder what he would think of this cover. Because I tell you, this book is every bit as noir as a Jim Thompson novel in its own way. This is definite noir, for sure. But it’s wrapped in such cozy trappings. Cozies aren’t what they used to be, are they? Neither are old ladies for that matter.

Be seeing you!

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