Murder Your Darlings – Jenna Blum

We, all of us, who have read her work, know that Jenna Blum is the “it girl” of writing with the chops to move from genre to genre and never disappoint. Murder Your Darlings, her first mystery, was instantly fun to read. The prologue introduces us to The Rabbit, a woman who seems to be stalking a guy at his remote home in Maine. The Rabbit gives us a quick sketch of her target, a highly successful author named William Corwyn. He is known for his capacity to write movingly from the female point of view, yet, we soon find out he is ,something of a pig who makes sure to bed as many women as he can, apparently with a style that leaves them wanting more. Oh dear.

Sam Vetiver, is writer on tour promoting her second novel which is not doing well. Hanging over her is the fear she will turn out to be a one hit wonder. Sam sends off familiar pings here and there that remind one of Jenna Blum herself, but without Blum’s string of successes. She is pretty. She is talented. She is smart. She is blonde. She loves speaking on her book tours. That’s Jenna Blum. However, Sam has terrible writer’s block and is fending off her agent and the publisher as her deadline draws near. Out of nowhere, William Corwyn reaches out to Sam, flatters her, wants to meet her. Uh oh. By then, we like Sam. We are rooting for Sam. She’s in a codependency group because of her relentless ability to pick the wrong men. So, she is a little wary but dammit, not wary enough. As she heads off toward William, we find ourselves desperately screaming, “Run Sam, run!” But then there would be no story, right?

We join William’s tour where he is promoting his new book in the wake of his last, a best selling novel, “All the Lambent Souls.” The reader can just imagine Blum coming up with the names and themes of Williams’s and Sam’s books. It also had to be a blast to come up with the plots/themes of the various works in progress of the aspiring writers featured here and there. These details alone makes this novel worth a read. In the “good works” part of his life, William has a sad backstory from graduate school that caused him to start a group for aspiring writers that he calls “The Darlings.” Sam similarly runs a weekly novelist’s workshop for aspiring writers. His is of course on a grand scale with meetings in large hotel rooms while hers meets on the top floor of an old building overlooking Boston Commons with an elevator that never quite lands even with the floor. Their pecking order in the industry, even though they have the same publisher is obvious. The cardboard life sized Williams peppered along his tour stops alone screams he is bringing in the big bucks.

Early on, William and Sam have a chemistry that seems to be more meaningful than is typical for William. There’s the usual fabulous sex often depicted in both an explicit and a hilarious way, discussions about her writer’s block and soon they have accumulated enough together time someone starts harassing Sam, warning her off William. William shares with Sam that the woman with an overbite who he calls “The Rabbit,” is his stalker and he cannot get the authorities to do anything about her. As time goes on, it becomes apparent to Sam that more than one woman, including some Darlings turned up dead. This realization seems to only make Sam, who is gaga for the guy, mildly nervous. Sigh.

The structure of this novel moves us among the first person points of view of Sam, William and The Rabbit. There are many laugh out loud moments and quite a few slapping oneself upside the head moments. There are also murders and suicides and scenes that do not spare us some gore. It is a reasonable amount of gore. All of the characters have depth, quirks and breath life. Every word in this novel feels perfectly placed. The storytelling– same. Although some educated guessing on my part was accurate, how the story moves to its end was quite satisfying, One can easily see this novel as a blockbuster success as the book itself suggests when it rounds up all the loose ends and lands us in a familiar setting but that’s all I’ll say about that. Well wrought Jenna Blum! We want more! Eeeeeee. (inside joke, promise)