Book Review: ALIBIS: WHERE WERE YOU?

Title: Alibis Collection: Where Were You?

Authors: Frieda McFadden, Sally Hepworth, David Lagercrantz (tr. Elizabeth Denoma), Chris Bohjalian, Chad Zunker, Wanda M Morris

Publisher: Amazon Original Stories

Pages: 328

My GoodReads Rating: Mentioned below for each story

 

This was my first time reading any of these authors.

 

Death Row by Frieda McFadden ⭐⭐⭐

Talia Kemper is on Death Row for murdering her husband, Noel. If her appeal fails, she will be executed in two weeks. She insists that she didn’t kill her husband. Is she lying?

 

I felt cheated with this story, first of all, because it upturned the theme in a manner that was clever but unjust to the theme. When I hear the word, alibi, I expect a murder, and there was that here, until there wasn’t. Many twists too many ruined the effect for me. The conclusion of this story left me feeling both sad and disappointed.

This could have been a good story, and it was, but not in a book themed, Alibis.

 

Ex-Wives Club by Sally Hepworth ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Ian Curley, a philandering and wealthy restaurateur with three ex-wives in his past, is now going steady with his much-younger girlfriend, Emma, who is as old as his older son, Max. On the night when Ian is stabbed to death, his body left in the meat freezer, he has had conflicts with all his ex-wives, Anita, Mary-Jane and Rosie, his son and his daughter, Daisy.

DI Charlene Li is determined to find the killer but it’s going to be tough, especially when she has dumb and lazy detective Adrian Collins as a partner. Besides, every one of the suspects has a strong alibi.

Strangely, the three wives are thick with each other, and meet for drinks every Friday at Curley’s restaurant, no less. The two children are employed at the restaurant.

Then there’s Yvette Renard, the French waitress who has never got along well with Ian, but is very good at her work. 

It was interesting to note that the author’s sympathies didn’t lie with the police at all or even with the victim, but with the larger cast of Curleys.

 

False Note by David Lagercrantz; translated by Elizabeth Denoma ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Wille hates his father, Knut, an opera singer who became famous. The man has a reputation for loving outrageously and cruelly. Having lost his mother when he was less than five years old, Wille hates the cruelty of his father and vows never to become like him.

As a student of medicine, he falls in love with Ebba, and she with him, or so it seems. But then she insists of meeting his father and becomes besotted with the older man, and breaks up with the son. A betrayal that Wille comes to know of only six weeks later.

The night after he confronts his father and leaves him to go away and drink his sorrows to death, Knut is found beaten to death. Wille is accused of murder, but he won’t reveal his alibi.

The story is written in the past tense PoV of Wille. We come to know his name, Wille, more than halfway into the story. Till then we know nothing about him, yet we are drawn to him. This young man who has suffered so much.

We learn eventually of the alibi, and it leaves us feeling confused. The conclusion of the story felt justified and sad at once, as it hurtles towards disaster. The story ended on a cliffhanger of sorts. I could definitely have done with closure on what happened next.

 

The Skydivers by Chris Bohjalian ⭐⭐⭐

A woman who is out biking stops by the wayside to watch two men skydiving. She is not prepared for what happens next. One of the two skydivers heads straight in the path of a harvested and is shredded to bits. The police believe that it is a suicide, that Pete Hamilton, the younger of the two brothers, who skydived together to spray the ashes of their dead father on his beloved field, was crazy with grief and chose to kill himself. But the lone eyewitness knows better. She thinks it is murder, and that the older brother, Leo, is guilty.

Though well written, this story took too long to get going. The story is drawn out needlessly. We are drawn into the conversation of the brothers over nine chapters from The Night Before and The Day It Happened. If the story had turned out the way the witness’s suspicions led her to believe, I think it would have been a better story.

Instead, the story went completely off-track after that, ending with a huge infodump that way absolutely not the way a story should end. So much information that we readers are left with and we don’t know what to do with it, because the story ends there, with a hint that events will be continued. Which is more than a short story can bear.

 

Good Neighbours by Chad Zunker ⭐⭐⭐

Kara Reed is a good neighbour to her friend, Mindy McGregor, who suspects that her husband, Bill, is having an affair. Her husband, Jackson, tells her not to get involved but Kara wants to be “good neighbours”. So when Kara sees someone sneaking into Mindy’s home while Mindy is away with her two kids at another child’s birthday party, she decides to investigate and find out who the Other Woman in Mindy’s marriage is. But Kara is thrown when she sees the visitor shooting Bill at point-blank range.

Pretty soon, Kara is fleeing for her life as the killer chases her to kill her.

The Alibis theme wasn’t so clear here.

 

Small Things by Wanda M Morris ⭐⭐⭐

Hannah Ferguson has always loved small things, pretty button, small seeds, coloured pebbles etc, things her husband hates. Rusty is always talking down to her, telling her how cheap her tastes are, dissing her hobbies. His verbal abuse increases with her inability to conceive. When she does get pregnant, she miscarries thrice. And Rusty’s cruelties get worse.

This story was well written. However, even though it was true to the theme, we are left in the dark about how a critical plot event takes place. This weakens the conclusion.

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)