Supper for Six by Fiona Sherlock

 

295 pages

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Release Date: October 19, 2023

Netgalley

 

Blurb

When Lady Anderson invites five guests to her apartment in Bruton Square, Mayfair, none of the guests know why they have been summoned. And it isn't long before dinner turns DEADLY.

Supper for Six . . . but murder is on the menu

London, 1977: Agapanthus and Francois Langford, Jeremy Crowley, Elizabeth Chalice and Chrissy Crowley have very little in common - except for the fact they have all been summoned at fairly short notice to attend a dinner party hosted by Lady Sybil Anderson, in her rather charming and opulent apartment in Bruton Square, Mayfair.

Except each guests believes they are having a private dinner party with their host - so the other visitors are quite a surprise.

Once the awkward introductions are out of the way, a powercut sends shockwaves through the group - and when the lights come back on, Jeremy is discovered dead.

Elizabeth Chalice - the only private investigator in the group - becomes detective, witness and suspect all at once . . . Is Jeremy's death an accident - or is it the very reason they've all been called here at once?

A murderous Abigail's Party - Fiona Sherlock's Supper for Six is immersive and incredibly entertaining. Join Elizabeth Chalice on her quest to get to the bottom of this rather deadly dinner party . . .

 

Review

To say I’m conflicted about this book would be a gross understatement. I’ll try to explain why that is the case.

But, first things first… What the blurb doesn’t mention is that this case is presented in the form of a podcast, hosted by Felix Caerphilly, an investigative journalist who started looking into the case as a teenager in 1978 but doesn’t make his findings public until the present day.

The podcast format means that the whole set-up is rather high-octane. I get it, with a podcast you need to keep your listeners on edge so that they return for the next episode. While the same is true for chapters in a book—you want to write them in such a way that your reader keeps on turning the pages— the need for cliffhangers is bigger with a podcast, simply because the listeners have no option but to wait for the next episode to be launched.

But…there is such a thing as too much and too fast. A breather, a moment to reflect, every now and again would have been nice. As it was, this story felt chaotic. It went back and forth, repeating itself more than once while also suddenly springing new information on the reader, as if out of nowhere. It had a bit of an ‘everything bar the kitchen sink’ feel to it. One suggested solution seemed to be in the story only to make a (political) point rather than because it had any real relevance to the mystery in question. And finally, I had to suspend my disbelief a bit too far on one or two occasions. For obvious, spoiler related, reasons I can’t actually go into the details of exactly what didn’t feel right to me.

Having said all that, I can’t deny that I read the book in under 24 hours without ever feeling the urge to put it aside because of any of the ‘issues’ I mentioned above. It is definitely a story that keeps you racing through the pages as you try to keep up with the various revelations and possible outcomes. Every single character in this story has secrets they want to keep hidden and reasons to be less than truthful, which raises the stakes and therefore keeps the reader engrossed.

Maybe this is not the book for those who feel strongly about the level of realism they expect to find in their mysteries. However, if you’re in the mood for a fast-paced (turbo-charged) story that will hook you and keep you captivated until the very end, you’ll almost certainly be entertained by this book.