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Your next favorite book
is waiting.
by Hazell Ward
In this fresh and immersive murder mystery that riffs on crime classics, the reader is put in the role of the Great Detective, reinvestigating an infamous never-before-solved case from 1970s England.
You are invited to a very special murder mystery party. The game is simple: Listen to the witnesses. Examine the evidence. Solve the case. Be careful. Trust no one. All might not be as it seems.
If you agree to play the role of the Great Detective, you must undertake to provide a complete solution to the case. A verdict is not enough. We need to know who did it, how they did it, and why. Are you ready? Can you solve the ultimate murder mystery—and catch a killer?
A word of warning: Unsolved mysteries are not permitted... .
"Move over, Anthony Horowitz. First-timer Ward has entered with a whodunit just as playfully meta as yours, though in very different ways." —Kirkus Reviews
"A high-energy mystery, both exclamation point and question mark – like Agatha Christie on amphetamines. Imagine a labyrinth packed with ninety-degree turns and spiralling staircases and art on the walls – and a ruthless guide addressing you directly from the page – and you've got a sense of The Game Is Murder, a striking, playful novel for neither the faint of heart nor the slow of wit." —A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman In The Window
"A postmodern puzzler that dares to pull apart every trope in the book – literally." —Antony Johnston, New York Times bestseller and author of Can You Solve the Murder?
This information about The Game Is Murder was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Hazell Ward spent many years as an adult education teacher before going on to work for a charitable organization. She completed an MA in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and is now working on her PhD. She was short-listed for the Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition in 2021 and won the CWA Short Story Dagger in 2023 for her story "Cast a Long Shadow," published by Honno Press. The Game Is Murder is her debut novel.
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