The Crime Writer - a review

As promised my first review of my read or weed em pile The opening scene of The Crime Writer by Greg Hurwitz opens with a bang. Drew Danner wakes up in a hospital bed to “a haze of face, too close for casual”. Two policemen are waiting for him to become conscious. Turns out these officers think he killed his ex-girlfriend as they found his unconscious body slumped over hers. There is only one problem, Danner had a tumor which caused him to black out so he has no memory of whether he really killed his ex or not. He is convicted of her murder but is released due to insanity of the time of the murder (that pesky tumor). He returns home only to find odd things happening - the first night he is home he awakens to find his patio sliding glass door open and bloody footprints which turn out to be his as he has cut his toe, or so he assumes, with the same type of knife used to kill his girlfriend. Since he is not sure whether he is sane or not he decides to look into the murder as if he were writing one of his own thrillers. He doesn't get very far along before another woman is found murdered in a manner very similar to the first murder and he is again arrested. However, due to his previous nocturnal activities he had filmed himself sleeping and the police must release him from custody.Drew determines to investigate this new murder as well. What I liked about this book is that Drew does think he might have killed his ex girlfriend and is terrified by this knowledge. I also liked the conceit of "writing" his own murder mystery and got a kick out of the pages marked up by his editor. His descriptions of Los Angeles and the types of people who live there are also fabulous. Here is just one example as Drew is waiting to see an actor friend in a club “they gain position in the scrum by working in concert, like raptors, with the friends they’ll only be too eager to drop once they book their first pilot.” Drew has a lot of people help him in his investigation, including his editor, a cop and forensic specialist, his AA sponsor and a young Latino kid. The AA sponsor, who is African American and the Latino kid sometimes veer awfully close into stereotype sidekick territory and I would have liked to see their characters fleshed out more. I was willing to overlook this problem though and just go along for the ride as Drew tries to solve his own mystery. Recommended with the caveat that this is more of a mystery than a thriller.