READING IDEAS FOR THE WEEK

Pretty As A Picture Pushkin, £8.99

“Give me a movie and I’ll find the meaning; I’ll find the truth; I’ll find the story. Sometimes, if I’m very lucky, I’ll find all three,” is how our protagonist Marissa describes her journey as an editor.

It is through her eyes we learn about the unfolding true crime that she finds herself involved in. These aspects of “meaning”, “truth”, and “story” become fundamental in solving the murder mystery before her.

As a fan of both film and true crime documentaries, Elizabeth Little’s most recent novel, Pretty As A Picture, seemed right up my alley.

However, while I was charmed by her use of movie trivia and knowledge of the Hollywood lingo, many parts of this novel did not hit home for me.

The main issue I had with this crime/mystery novel was its format. At the end of some chapters, the story’s narration would switch to a podcast about the crime.

Not only does this break the story up and ruin the immersion into the mystery, but it also tends to spoil what is to come before it has happened – for example, in the first podcast it blatantly says what Marissa is going to face on this set before she has even got there, when in the previous chapter a lot of secrecy was being created around the film. If this aspect of the novel was removed, I believe it would become a lot more impactful and interesting for its genre (hence the reason for its relatively low score).

Furthermore, the twist in the story does not occur until very late in the plot development, and I guessed the culprit before the story even reached its halfway point.

This made the rest of it drag a little, as characters appeared more and more melodramatic through the unfolding events and the crime was solved extremely fast. It was all a little unbelievable by the end – specifically with Billy (no spoilers) as his reasoning made no sense at all.

However, all in all, I was still captivated by the characters themselves – for example, Marissa was very well written and developed (and it was easy to watch the way her mind worked).

If you are someone younger and crime fiction is something you want to dive into but haven’t before, I’d say this would be good beginner’s start.