Maureen Johnson: Nine Liars

This is going to be all spoilers, so look out. You've been warned.

I was excited to read this book and enjoyed it to a certain degree the first time through, as I was wondering who committed the murder, but then I read it again and it all fell apart. The mystery makes no sense at all once you have read the book.

Look at all the incredible logic flaws.

The country house is set up so that it's essentially impossible that anyone else but the nine were there that night, with the power outage and the road blocked off by a downed wire and a power truck. But nobody from the nine themselves to the police ever suspect or investigate any of the nine. That is completely nonsensical. In a typical country house murder, yes, the situation is closed off so that we know the suspect HAS to be one of the people present. This does half of that and then everyone is inexplicably stricken with severe stupidity and they all go, "I don't know, burglars?" and shrug and just LET IT GO. No. Insane. The police don't even try? They take statements from these obvious liars and let it go?

The burglary theory is because people have been stealing tack in the area. Sure. (Does the murderer even know this? No indication of that.) But the murders were in the woodshed. The stables are on the opposite side of the massive house from the woodshed, according to the map in the book. Even supposing you kept tack in the woodshed, because you like having saddles eaten by mice, I guess, you wouldn't keep them all the way on the other side of this extensive building from the stables. You wouldn't keep tack in the woodshed period, obviously, but certainly not in this situation. But somehow everyone just goes, "Oh, sure, someone broke in to steal tack from a building WHERE TACK IS NOT KEPT." Why not.

The killer is not set up at all to be the kind of person who violently murders two close friends with an axe. There are no signals or clues whatsoever. The group is set up to be totally laid back about sharing each other's clothes, books, food, and beds. But one of them all of a sudden decides that someone else *just kissing a perfect stranger* is so offensive that he kills not the friend who did it but the girl herself. None of that makes any sense in any psychological universe. And then to kill two more people who have absolutely no evidence whatsoever to accuse him makes even less sense. The murders are completely unmotivated.

Killing someone with an axe in cold blood is incredibly violent and far-fetched and outrageously difficult for anyone without a history of violence to do. And there's no earthly reason for this character to use that method when so many others are available. For example, if he's a drowner, he could EASILY have lured those two people to the creek RIGHT NEARBY (where they throw the axe later) and drowned them. Bang on the head with a rock, fall in the creek, they drown with no question of murder and no suspicion of anyone.

It's also absurd to lure these two to a woodshed right slap next to the main house, when there's a whole vast landscape available. If he killed them way out in the woods, by any means, they might never even be found.

There's also the complete idiocy about the pot plants on the upper level of this woodshed, which everyone somehow lowers out the tiny window (pot plants are gigantic) intact, instead of, oh, cutting them up to make it easy--or taking them down the goddamn ladder/stairs, which they used to bring the grow lights down. There is NO REASON for anyone to do this ridiculous and difficult thing with the window except to provide a clue.

Also, the entire group of seven bereaved and hung over people cheerfully destroy all of the evidence in a murder scene. Do they not realize they're making it impossible to catch THE MURDERER??? And committing all sorts of crimes themselves? They're so stupid that they aren't ever aware that one of them has to be the murderer, so presumably they're also so stupid they can't figure out that they're destroying the evidence in the crime.

This all ties into the biggest flaw with the murder: smells like writer. Everything was set up to be convenient for the writer, not because it's what any human ever born on planet earth would ever remotely do. None of it makes any logical sense. It's so obviously structured for the writer.

Constructing a clue path in a mystery means you have to have plausible reasons for people to do the things they do. They can't all just forget that laws and reason exist en masse. And setting up the completely ludicrous woodshed tack burglary theory makes every single person involved so stupid that they can't possibly find their way out of a wet paper bag.

There were things I liked about this book, but all the excruciatingly tedious tourism wasn't one of them. The character of Vi has zero personality and is a waste of space as always, my favorite guy Nate had no role at all in the story, David was a raging asshole as usual, Stevie is an idiot obsessed with this guy who's only ever a complete jerk to her--and it's not cute or funny that she doesn't do school work--and the ridiculous denouement in the London Eye was laughable because the evidence was the flimsiest of circumstantial suppositions. You, a child, are accusing an adult of murder because someone had a toothbrush in her bag. A toothbrush. Imagine going to court with that. You'd be laughed out of the room.

Also being an Angophile can apparently reach toxic fetish levels. Gross. Get a room.

This is a bad mystery and unforgivably boring to boot.

I own all of the author's books and looked forward to this book all year, so I'm beyond disappointed and into the realm of infuriated at the laziness, the atrocious plotting, the utter lack of logic, the endless tedious tourism, the failure to give our beloved characters anything to do, and the complete inability to think through the slightest bit of the murder or the character development to make it make sense.