 Murder mysteries. They are a timeless genre. They really are. I mean, you can read stuff that was written over a hundred years ago by like Agatha Christie and still enjoy it today. And you can also read modern murder mysteries and the formula hasn't changed that much. The general idea is there's been a murder or sometimes multiple murders and our main hero who is usually some sort of detective. They may be an amateur one. They may be professional. It may be a police procedural, something like that. But the general idea is that there's some sort of murder and then they come in and they need to investigate and follow some clues until near the end of the story. They find out who did it and usually they catch or kill them. Sometimes they get away. That is the general formula. There's some deviations from it, but the basic idea has not changed for a very very long time and frankly, I don't think it needs to change. You know, like doing original stuff is always good and all, but this is one instance where you don't need to do it. You can do the same thing over and over again as long as you do it well. And it's easy to see how this could be the case, even if you're not a fan of murder mysteries. Because the setup is just a great way to automatically introduce compelling drama right into the beginning of the story and to introduce a big question that the audience wants to know the answer to. However, the downside of this is that pretty much every writer when they're starting off thinks that they can do a murder mystery. Like a lot of people try it and even I did. When I was 15, I did write a terrible fiction press murder mystery and maybe I'll do a video on that one day. We'll see, but the point is first-time authors trying murder mysteries usually doesn't work out that well and that brings me to 14 ways to die. Now, you need a compelling mystery to make a murder mystery work well and this book just doesn't have that. You know, like I said, it is a first-time author, so just getting this published at all is a step to bigger and better things and that's great, but that doesn't mean this book is good. And I also want to mention that this was originally published in the United Kingdom under the title Are You Watching? So if anyone in the audience lives on that God-forsaken island and they hear the setup for this and think wait, that sounds like this other book. Well, that's why. Now the setup for this book is pretty good, but it's written by someone who, like I said, just doesn't seem to have much of an idea of what he's doing. And so he doesn't really know how to set it up in such a way where the main character has to be the one doing investigating and he also doesn't know how to make that investigation very compelling. And even if I really wanted to know who the killer was throughout the whole story and I wanted to see him brought to justice in some way, it just kind of falls flat. The story is about a 17-year-old girl named Jess, whose mother was killed about 10 years before the story begins by a serial killer who goes by the name the Magpie Man, which is the dumbest, least intimidating name for a serial killer I've ever heard. I just I just want to throw that out there. It's like just like if I had to come up with a name for a very stereotypical English serial killer, I think I would call him something like the Magpie Man, but anyways. And since then he's also killed 12 more, so he's at 13 so far and Jess is worried that she might become the 14th by drawing attention to herself. That's like a small plot point in this book. And you know, I will say it's automatically a very compelling setup, you know, because the first couple chapters are devoted to describing how her mother was killed and how the man who killed her hasn't been found and how Jess's life has fallen apart in the past 10 years. And it's compelling. You know, you automatically feel bad for her. You hate the Magpie Man. You want to see him brought to justice. You want to see him get caught. The main issue is that they don't really leave many clues at the beginning part, because that's what makes a good murder mystery is by putting out all the clues that the audience needs to put things together on their own. And even if you're not smart enough to do it, you can at least look back afterwards and go, oh yeah, I see how that connects now. Whereas this doesn't really do that, it hides most of the information from you up until when the killer is revealed. And the killer is also someone that it's pretty much impossible to see coming, because he's not introduced until very late in the book. Now in order to find the Magpie Man, Jess signs up to be a contestant on this, like, internet reality show called The Eye. And basically what The Eye is is people will watch her one day a week, and they'll see all the things she posts on her social media accounts and all the messages she sends from her phone. And there's also a camera crew that just kind of follows her in her regular day-to-day life, which, um, how exactly does this help her find the Magpie Man? You know, like the idea is that, okay, she's going to draw attention to it, and people are going to start talking and maybe one of them will give me the clue I need to find out the case, but that's kind of stupid. And this may have worked as a setup if, uh, this was like a cold case. You know, if her mother had been killed 10 years ago and the police searched for a little while and they just eventually gave up, shrugged their shoulders and walked away, and she wanted to draw more attention to it so that more people and resources would go back into the case and start searching again, then sure, that would make sense, but that's not it. People are actively searching for the Magpie Man. He is a nationally famous serial killer who was killed over a dozen people spread out all over England. You know, it's not like it's just this local phenomenon or anything, so people already know about this, so raising awareness or drawing attention to it isn't going to help in any way, so how exactly does this fit? It doesn't. And I will admit that didn't occur to me until I was a little ways into the book and I realized, you know, that her being on the show doesn't seem to be helping in any way. Like when I read the summary of it, I thought, okay, yeah, that seems like a good way to start off at least. And I don't know, it just, it very quickly fell apart once I realized that. Plus, I just want to say that crowd funding information is a really bad idea when you're trying to solve a crime because people on the internet are just going to relay shit that they heard like third or fourth hand or they'll just make things up or they'll jump to massive conclusions and it's just going to confuse the whole thing. And I don't know, from this point forward, there's going to be spoilers because it's kind of difficult to talk about what makes a murder mystery good or bad without going into spoilers, so I guess I'll just do that. If you want to read 14 Ways to Die, I mean, I wouldn't recommend it, but I mean, I've certainly read worse. It's just a very clumsy murder mystery. So if you want spoilers, then goodbye, I guess. Now, like I said, this book starts pretty good. It's like a description of her mom's murder and how her life has fallen apart in the past 10 years and how badly she wants the Magpie Man to be brought to justice and yada, yada, yada. She talks to the audience about it and you feel like no one wants to help her with this and so that's why she eventually got desperate enough to sign up for the show. So even though it's a stupid idea, it kind of works. And for a little while, we get into the routine of her being on the show and talking about herself and we hear a little bit about the other contestants on there, but they're not important. And later, she meets another boy who was the son of another victim of the Magpie Man and you think, okay, is she going to like run into him and they're going to talk and he's going to provide her with some crucial clue that she can use to start her own investigation and follow the trail until she eventually catches the Magpie Man and no, not really. He's just another character who shows up and I mean, he's not like a bad character or anything. Like just like with Jess, he is kind of compelling in how much suffering he's undergone and how much he wants to catch this killer, but he doesn't really add anything to the mystery aspect. In fact, the angle of the eye and this whole internet reality show is dropped pretty quickly or at least it fades into the background pretty quickly and it winds up not being much of anything other than like a way to get the plot started. It's just a plot device, I guess you'd call it. Like there's a reason most murder mysteries start with the murder and they don't start 10 years later. Like I'm not saying you can't do this or that it couldn't be done. I'm just saying that when you do it this way and then you abandon the whole thing that made the murder mystery kind of different and a little bit compelling, then you've lost out on a lot of what made people pick up your book in the first place. Then there's a couple of really bad bait and switches where you think, oh, okay, this might be the killer. We might be able to catch him. This clue might bring us to him, but then it's switched out and you realize, oh, okay, that was stupid and it didn't help at all. Like first she starts getting some text messages on her phone from someone claiming to be the Magpie Man and at first she doesn't tell anyone about this, which is really, really goddamn dumb. Like she thinks that they are the Magpie Man. It's not like she thinks it's a prank or something, but even if she did think it was a prank, she should probably tell somebody, but she just leaves it alone for a day or two and then eventually she decides, okay, I will tell people and then she goes home and like the police are already there and they already know about this somehow and the text messages don't really lead anywhere because not long after that a brick goes through her window and it has a note attached to it, which also claims to be from the Magpie Man and so there's a subplot about that and for a while they chased down who did it and it turns out it was her cameraman. Like the guy with the camera who followed her around filming her for the eye was the one who both sent the messages in and put a brick through her window because he thought it would be compelling drama or something and that's why would you do that man? Like that is extremely illegal and honestly I could see that happening if it was like the producer who did it because in this book the producer and the cameraman are the two who follow her around basically and the producer seems like an okay guy but you would expect him to be the one to do this shit because well producers are the ones who produce it they're the ones that try to get it out there and make it compelling and make it fun or whatever but you would expect him to do that and not the cameraman but whatever that's just a very small nitpick at the end of the day the main issue is that this whole subplot leads nowhere and doesn't help anyone find the Magpie Man. Then there's a whole arc about how one of her friends drinks too much and gets alcohol poisoning and almost dies and she lives but she almost dies and that's like a big thing I guess I care so much about her friend. I totally remember what her name is. Now close to the end of the book the story finally starts moving a little bit further when we feel like okay we're getting clues which will actually help with this investigation and what happens is while Jess is at school a bunch of new clippings from newspapers and magazines about her mom's murder uh suddenly appear in her backpack and it looks like her teacher may have put them there and so she discusses it with her friends a little and she thinks about it and she realizes I think he's the killer I think he's doing this to taunt me which is not a crazy conclusion to come to however it turns out he is not the killer what what happened was he he saw that this was affecting Jess and he felt really bad for her and he wanted to try and help with this so he put all the newspaper clippings in her backpack to remind her or communicate with her about it because he's too awkward to just say anything bro what the fuck why do you think that's something she would want to be reminded of like hey remember a couple years ago when your mother was brutally murdered right outside your house you want to be reminded of that what the fuck dude that's that's like one of the weirdest red herrings I've ever come across in a murder mystery and there's a ton of red herrings in murder mysteries and then suddenly we realize that we need to have a climax so it turns out one of her friends the one who got alcohol poisoning her dad is the killer he's the magpie man and right when Jess realizes that she's trapped in his house and he kidnaps her and he's takes her to a graveyard where her mom is buried and he's gonna kill her and at this stage if you wanted to at least have a thrilling climax you could do something where Jess manages to formulate a plan and escape on her own or escape with her friend because one of her friends is also there with her but that doesn't happen they just manage to call for help and then Jess's dad arrives and he beats up the magpie man and I'll admit I did like that brief moment because you can tell it's very cathartic for her dad and it's like even though he's not a major character this is the end to his character arc like he finally found the man who killed his wife and ruined him and his daughter's life and he's able to punish him he doesn't kill him but he does beat him up pretty bad and then they send him to jail and then he gets put on trial and okay like I liked that little bit of it but honestly Jess being completely dependent on having to be rescued by someone else makes her seem like a useless damsel in distress now this could maybe have worked if Jess had actually been like a really smart detective who had gone through all this investigation and found all these clues and put everything together on her own that and then she has to be rescued at the end I think that could work because she's still a competent story or competent character for like 80 to 90 percent of the story but we don't have that it's just Jess stumbling into the identity of the killer and then getting herself in trouble and then having to be rescued so it makes her seem like a shitty protagonist and that's really all I have to say like yeah there's certainly more details but a huge chunk of this book is like interpersonal drama as opposed to you know trying to go after the murderer which is what we came here for in the beginning like I honestly just don't have a lot else to say my main problem with this and probably bigger problem than everything else is that it's written like a James Patterson novel in that each chapter is like a paragraph long like you you look and see here that's an entire chapter right there and it's not the only one that's like that there's a whole bunch of them that are like that and I don't like when books are written that way because the thing about chapters is that they have to still have their own beginning middle and end like something has to happen in each chapter something of note has to happen in each chapter like imagine that a book is like a season of television and each chapter is an episode if there was an entire episode where nothing happened and the story didn't feel like it advanced at all then you'd be kind of annoyed right even if it was a shorter episode than normal like chapters are like that in a book and so I don't like that James Patterson style especially because a lot of the time it just winds up being I heard a noise outside I went to go look and then the next chapter I looked outside there was nothing there and closed the door and the next chapter I heard the noise again so I ran out and investigated and I found something importantly it's just annoying and it forces you to have to turn the pages more and I know that sounds like a very strange complaint but if you have less text on each page then that forces you to turn the pages more and it takes you out of it slightly you know like the more actions and the more just stuff you put between your audience and consuming the story the less they get into the story it it's kind of like how a few months ago I saw this photoshopped image it was a screenshot from Elden Ring but it was like what it would look like if it was made by Ubisoft and so the HUD just clutters the entire screen and it's just covered with all kinds of annoying shit and like if you tried to play the game like that it would be much more annoying than it is in the real game and that's just kind of what this reminds me of like you know like this is almost 400 pages it would have been like 40 shorter if they weren't wasting all this space all the time and I don't know just like constantly having to think oh okay nothing happened in this chapter let's go the next one it is annoying and that's it you know this isn't even like a horrible book that I can point to a bunch of dumb stuff and laugh at it it's just kind of dumb and nonsensical and boring and just poorly put together you know it is a it is a failure as a mystery it really is which is disappointing because it did have a very good setup but you know that just goes to show you that having a good idea for a story and actually writing a good book are two very different things and that that's about it i'll see you later goodbye huge thank to everyone watch this far thank to ten dollar and above patron people names oppo savalainen olivia reyan brother santotes buffy valentine carolina clay dan and seljevich dark king dio echo evie flax great griebo carcat kitsune el linburg liza rudakova lord tiebreaker matthew bodro microphone peep the toad return of cardamom roby reviews sad martigan sillier the vixen tesla shark vavictus and wesley and all the other names um thank two people for give patron money if you want name on list or other patron benefit consider donate if not share like video comment subscribe thank goodbye