Review - West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman
Dann McDorman presents an ambitious debut with his novel West Heart Kill. This book tells the story of a private detective’s visit to a remote hunting club. But at the same time, McDorman gets a bit meta and breaks from the story to give occasional commentary about the detective genre. This makes it feel like this book is both part of the genre, but also subverting the genre at the same time.
Our detective, McAnnis, has come with an old friend to West Heart, a private hunting club with a storied past and a wide range of characters. It’s Independence Day and nearly every cabin is filled with revelers. McAnnis wastes no time snooping around the clubhouse, meeting various residents, and making everyone suspicious.
Soon there are some accidents, some midnight rendezvous, some deaths, and one big storm.
The club is cut off from the rest of the world, trapping all the residents with a killer. Motives and suspects abound.
The point of view shifts throughout this book, which serves to leave the reader a little unsure of where they stand. Once we leave McAnnis’ POV, we never find out whose POV we’re seeing the rest of the story from. Then, in the final act, McDorman turns the narrative into a play starring all the main characters. This is where many of the secrets are revealed, through a series of arguments and explanations the characters give each other.
Ultimately, I think this was an interesting book with a unique concept. The commentary sections of the book were sometimes entertaining, but otherwise distracting. They pull the reader out of the story and include references to other mystery novels (references which are only effective if the reader is familiar with the works referenced). And after all that, the end of the book felt supremely dissatisfying. It felt as though McDorman was instructing me on how detective stories work, telling me this wasn’t like all the others, but also expecting me to solve the mystery myself. It could be an educational re-read now that I know what to expect, but with a TBR like mine, I don’t know when I’d ever get back to it.
Have you read West Heart Kill? Tell me what you thought!
