Death by the Book

I’ll admit, I rolled my eyes at the ‘dead author at a book festival’ premise—until Mercy McCarthy started narrating her own investigation with the dry wit of a woman who’s seen one too many tourists ask for ‘authentic Irish tea’ (it’s just tea, love). Lucy Connelly’s writing crackles with the kind of observational humor that makes you snort-laugh in public, and Kimberly M. Wetherell’s performance sells every line, especially when Mercy’s internal monologue veers into delightfully petty territory. The voice for the victim’s agent—a nasally, self-important drawl—had me rewinding just to hear it again. That said, the middle act sags slightly under the weight of *too* many quirky suspects (do we really need the knitting circle subplot?), and Wetherell’s pacing occasionally stumbles over Connelly’s denser descriptive passages. But the payoff—a reveal that hinges on both a baking metaphor *and* a literary in-joke—is worth the minor drag. What really won me over? The way the audiobook leans into its medium: Wetherell’s delivery of Mercy’s asides feels like she’s confiding in *you* over a pint, making the listening experience intimate in a way the page might not. If you’ve ever side-eyed a ‘genius’ author at a reading or judged a scone’s crumb, this is your kind of murder.