The Other People by C B Everett

I would like to thank Simon and Schuster for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Simon and Schuster

Published – Out Now

Price – £18.99 hardback £9.99 ebook

Ten strangers.
An old dark house.
A killer picking them off one by one.
And a missing girl who's running out of time. . .

Ten strangers wake up inside an old, locked house. They have no recollection of how they got there.
In order to escape, they have to solve the disappearance of a young woman.
But a killer also stalks the halls of the house, and soon the body count starts to rise.
Who are these strangers? Why were they chosen? Why would someone want to kill them?
And who – or what – is the Beast in the Cellar?

Forget what you think you know.

The contained murder mystery has a long history in crime fiction. Gather a strange collection of people place them on a train, a manor house or far off island and let the evil deeds stack up. Hopefully a hero will take charge and shed some light on the crimes and unmask the culprit. It’s a locked room mystery but with a bigger set of locations and that allows for some innovative takes. In C B Everett’s entertaining thriller The Other People we go to a strange house where an assortment of strangers have twelve hours to solve a crime but soon find their own lives are also at stake.

Student Kyle Tanner remembers talking to his flatmates at the weekend and awakes in a strange room to a storm outside. He thinks he sees someone dragging a body out the window and then realises he has no idea where he is. He soon finds he is one of a dozen people gathered together secretly to help find a missing woman. He has no idea why he has been chosen. He recognises none of the other people but very quickly they realise that this set of games is deadly for all involved.

There is a lot to enjoy in this story. Everett assembles a large cast and subverts our opinion of people, throws in a ton of secrets and the whole manor house evokes the type of weird gothic Kyles studies. There are a host of interesting characters such as Captain Jimmy Saint who tries to take charge of the crew and finds it is a lot harder with civilians. The ever-drunk Iain watches more than you think and some like the older woman Syvia just drive everyone instance with her horrible attitude to well anyone. Lots of shifting dynamics and then the deaths start mounting up. It runs at a good pace, and I think quite an enjoyable resolution will be found.

There is though a bit of an issue and that can be the reader’s curse that you can recognise certain signs and indeed pretty early on I guessed where we may be heading. I feel the story slightly overplayed it hand a little early and a little more restraint would not have dangled so many clues as to which type of mystery tale this will be. I appreciate how it all comes together ands a good set of reveals will catch the unwary reader off guard but for me I needed a little bit more misdirection and perhaps a setting that similar tales have not used so much.

The Other People is a diverting crime tale that tips its hat to its predecessors well, is well constructed and most of should deliver some fun to the reader. On that note it delivers and it worth a look.