Thank you to netgalley, the author and the publisher for this advance reader copy.
I so wanted to love this book having read the blurb. Unfortunately I had to give up 20% into the story because I found it too confusing to follow. There were so many characters that I couldn't remember who was who and I found the storyline confusing. Not for me I'm afraid.

Although a bit bit of slow burner, it is well worth sticking with this book. Beautifully written and truly a masterpiece.

Love a good Chris Brookmyre novel and this is one of those. Miss Marple meets Harry Bosch by way of Douglas Adams! Mystery, thriller, cosy crime, crime noir and Sci-fi, this book covers many a genre. Entertaining page turner and a change of style for Chris Brookmyre. Fear not though, his dark humour and likeable characters are all present and correct.

WOW what an edge of the seat mystery thriller The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre is. This is my first time reading a book by this fantastic author.

Penny Coyne an elderly librarian in a sleepy village encounters John Hawke an LAPD Homicide Detective, an unlikely pair team up together to solve the mystery of a double locked-rooom mystery. and much much more.

A book, a movie, a video game, murder, deceit, science fiction all factor in this mystery thriller. Agatha Christie, John Marrs, Michael Connelly rolled into the mix.

I love John Hawke's catchphrase 'Holly Goly.' when he is up against it and has a light bulb moment it is so endearing. Don't let Penny in her twinset and tweed fool anybody as beneath her exterior she is one smart cookie. Also behind hard hitting Detective John Hawke there lies a heart of gold especially in his relationship with Penny.

Found this a very intriguing read but did require some perseverance, some bits I got and some I didn’t, well least not until the end. The meeting of the two central characters was fun to read and follow however bizarre it got and in the end I was waiting for the Penny to drop, which it duly did. A gumshoe and tweeds avatar which I enjoyed reading.

From the blurb:

FORGET WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW
THIS IS NOT THAT CRIME NOVEL

You know Johnny Hawke. Hard-bitten LAPD homicide detective. Always in trouble with his captain, always losing partners, but always battling for the truth, whatever it takes.

You know Penny Coyne. The little old lady who has solved multiple murders in her otherwise sleepy village, despite bumbling local police. A razor-sharp mind in a Sunday best hat.

A cross-genre hybrid of Agatha Christie and Michael Connelly, The Cracked Mirror is the most imaginative and entertaining crime novel of the year, a genre-splicing rollercoaster with a poignantly emotional heart.

Well, I didn't know Johnny Hawke, but I ADORE Michael Connelly. I also don't know Penny Coyne, nor have I read Agatha Christie - but I did really enjoy this book.

It's actually incredibly quite difficult to write a review which doesn't give any spoilers and I don't ever do that!

There is something troubling about the content, something which we can't understand yet, the possibilities and risks that makes me feel like it's tapping into a world, which frankly scares the shit out of me!

Thank you Netgalley for my advanced copy, I'll be checking out the authors other work for certain now!

I got about 15% in before I gave up. I found it quite confusing and wasn’t really sure what was happening. I loved the premise when I first heard of it and the actual writing was very good. I’m sure if I’d persevered there would have been some great twists but I just think it wasn’t for me.

I enjoyed this mystery/thriller very much, even though most of the time I had no clue what was going on! There are red herrings, dead ends and confusion aplenty as elderly Scot Penny and suspended LA cop Johnny sleuth together to uncover the riddle connecting three (or more) murders - or were some of them suicides?! Whilst the denouement requires a bit of an imaginative stretch, it doesn't detract from the overall plot, which has seemed borderline fantastical from the very start. I particularly enjoyed the love-hate relationship between the two protagonists, and their different styles of investigating the crimes. This book is a page-turner, lighthearted but well-written, an excellent choice for a summer read for puzzle lovers.

Ohhh very interesting premise and fun read

I loved the two characters and how they were written, I could not get enough!

This book caught my eye because I enjoy reading Agatha Christie and Michael Connelly, and I'd just finished reading my first Christopher Brookmyre book. I was intrigued how he was going to combine such different styles, but he does it excellently, alternating between two stories which don’t appear to be related initially, but start to become intertwined as the book progresses. The Agatha Christie element is very Miss Marple. It’s impossible to say more without giving the major plot twist away. It’s a long book for a crime novel (the paperback has 512 pages) but it kept me interested and was a satisfying read. Highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Cracker Mirror was the first book I’ve read by Chris Brookmyre, and I was thrilled to receive an ARC copy because the premise really intrigued me. It’s one of those books that I can’t say too much about without giving plot lines away, and one that you should absolutely go into blind to get the most immersive experience.

It’s Russian dolls in book form. There are so many layers, so many characters, and every time I thought I might have figured out where the story was going, I was proven wrong.

That being said, I found the pacing of this book quite slow for my own tastes. This book is set in four parts, and I was confused for the entirety of part 1, although I thoroughly enjoyed part 2. Similarly, I enjoyed part 3 to begin with but thought it lost its way towards the end. This middle part was where we could have lost 50-100 pages and still told the same story. I thought part 4 was a good conclusion and very very clever, and Chris Brookmyre’s writing is brilliant.

Overall, I thought The Cracked Mirror was undeniably far-fetched and a little bit silly, but ultimately a whole lot of fun. When this worked for me, it really worked. It just took me a lot longer to get into than I’d hoped, and didn’t have me hooked the whole way through.

Thank you NetGalley, Little Brown Book Group for the opportunity to read the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

At first I thought this was like an Agatha Christie novel which I don't like particularly. An Octogenarian sleuth who solves murders in a little village in Scotland, teams up with an LA cop on suspension to solve a few similar cases of suicide which are not quite what they seem.
Quirky murder mystery with an unusual and unexpected twist at the end.

I’ve been looking forward to reading this book as I am a big fine of the detective/crime genre, but I’m afraid I was terribly disappointed. There is an enormous cast of characters and it’s impossible to keep track; even the two central characters are entirely two-dimensional. Numerous stories overlap which makes it all very disjointed and by the end I had no understanding of who had committed any of the crimes or even who was whom. I’m very sorry because I always try to be positive in my reviews but I just didn’t enjoy anything about this book.

Thank you to netgalley, the author and the publisher for the advance copy to read.

Sadly I had to DNF at 25%. I really couldn't grasp what was happening with the two storylines running together. I didn't remember a single characters name and didn't really understand what was happening.

The actual writing was decent, it just wasn't for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book with no obligation to review.

This is very inventive indeed. At first I was not sure about it, I didn't really like the Penny bit at the start but then we meet Johnny and I liked that theme much more., even although there is a surprisingly upsetting death very early in the LA section.. It all hots up when Penny and Johnny meet and from then on the story just zips along with loads happening, some things perhaps rather less believable than others - a shoot out in the public library of a genteel Perthshire town, for example.. I was a bit irked by some apparent inconsistencies in the action but keep reading and find out why.

Towards the end it all becomes very Black Mirror and although I cannot pretend to understand all the technicalities, it is a great and original twist. Finally, we think we know everything and then the last paragraph makes us doubt all over again.

Really enjoyable.

I loved the sound of two drastically different detectives colliding and working together in The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre. The idea of a Miss Marple type of detective working with a Harry Bosch L.A. type really tickled my fancy.

The story begins in picturesque Perthshire and an elderly Penny Coyne, Librarian and amateur detective, is preparing to go to a high-society wedding. She’s not sure why she has been invited, but is intent on going anyway to find out why. Running parallel, in Los Angeles, Johnny Hawke is a LAPD homocide detective called in to investigate a mysterious death death in a film studio. His investigation takes him to Scotland and the same hotel and wedding that Penny Coyne is attending.

I enjoyed the fish out of element of the story of Johnny Hawke in Scotland. I enjoyed reading the burgeoning relationship between Johnny and Penny, which was believable, touching and a joy to read.

Without giving away too much, this is a pacy story with even further strands. At one point, I had to re-read a chapter or two just to make sure I was across it all. Despite that, I thoroughly enjoyed this edgy exciting story!

Huge thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, Little, Brown Book Group UK, for making the e-ARC available to me in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This was just a bit beyond me. There are more than one story going on so its like reading two or 3 books at once. I gave up halfway through.

Chris Brookmyre’s The Cracked Mirror is a rather unusual murder mystery. It begins almost as a cosy crime novel, as we meet elderly Scottish lady Penelope Coyne, with her razor-sharp mind and her penchant for solving crimes in the sleepy village of Glen Cluthar. A corpse is found in the confessional booth of a local church, strangled. Meanwhile, in California, Johnny Hawke, a world-weary LAPD cop is investigating the possible suicide of a Hollywood screenwriter. At first the two characters seem totally unconnected – a blend of Miss Marple and Harry Bosch – but slowly the two characters’ paths converge and we see them embark on a case where things aren’t always as they first seem.

I haven’t read anything by Chris Brookmyre before, but this a very difficult novel to review. I am hesitant to go into the plot for fear of spoilers, suffice to say that the blurbs give so much away that I would recommend any prospective reader tries to avoid them before reading this book. In fact I’ll go as far as to say that there are certain quotes that gave enough away to allow me to guess the big twist at the end – so from a publisher’s point of view I felt these shouts about how imaginative and genre-splicing the novel is do the book a huge disservice. Brookmyre is already an established crime writer and the publishers should have trusted that word of mouth would have been enough to see this succeed. There is a large amount of characters (although some of them appear only fleetingly and have little bearing on the main plot) and at times the story lags a bit. There are telltale signs that give away the ending (especially when one has the descriptions in mind that suggest the direction the plot is headed) so I felt that it wasn’t quite as clever as it should have been. However it does try to do something very original with the crime novel and for that it should be applauded.

The writing is fast-paced and the plot is at times great fun. But the tone will probably satisfy neither lovers of cosy crime or advocates of the American suspense novel, and I feel the twist might leave some readers rather disappointed. The Cracked Mirror is something of a curate’s egg; not a bad novel, but rather an imaginative one, whose greatest trick is spoiled by over-dramatic marketing.

I am always really excited to see a new Chris Brookmyre novel, partly because I never know what will be inside. The Cracked Mirror did not disappoint although I was slightly perturbed at the start, meeting elderly librarian Penelope Coyne in her homely Perthshire village where lots of murders happen and wondering if this was going to be Brookmyre's take on 'cozy' crime. not my preferred genre. Then a quick switch in the next chapter to LA and hardboiled cop Johhny Hawke so it seemed as if we were going to get a bit of Chandleresque noir. However this is Chris Brookmyre so don't try to second guess where he's going. As with many of his novels Brookmyre writes female characters really well and Penelope is a great character. Perthshire and LA both find themselves the settings for unexpected suicides (or were they murders?) that someone wants to cover up and this brings the two main protagonists together as unlikely c0-investigators. The relationship between Penny and Johhny is well developed, characterised by trust and care and populated with shoot-outs, car chases, dead bodies and lots of bad'uns. This was a book I couldn't stop reading but didn't want to finish and now want to re-read, looking for clues! This was indeed a bit of cozy crime, hard-boiled noir and buddy road adventure all wrapped up in some very interesting ethical debates with a bit of speculative fiction on the top. The Cracked Mirror is a 'cracking' good read. Thanks to the publisher Little Brown Book Group UK for an ARC of this title via Net Galley.

I’m afraid this one wasn’t for me. I really enjoyed the first few chapters when it was like a cosy mystery. But I thought there had been a publishing error when it jumped to hard-boiled LA detective territory.
It was jarring and didn’t work.