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A review by booksbybindu
Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds by John Everson
4.0
‘Five Deaths For Seven Songbirds’ is a dark thriller, with an atmospheric setting, a foreboding style of writing and hooked me right from the start! I thoroughly enjoyed all the jazz references and went on a Spotify journey whilst reading this novel. Like a good piece of musical composition it had its main theme throughout but came with up and down tempos and built to a high octane crescendo at it's fulfilment. It was thoroughly entertaining.
I came into this book blind - as in the case I didn’t know anything about the term ‘giallo’. A lot of the reviews of ‘Five Deaths’ mention this term and reference the film they believe this novel is based upon. So I did a lot of googling and found that the wiki page was actually very informative so I will drop the link here;
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giallo
What I discovered is that the idea of this regional genre felt more accessible when I realised that the original books were translations of authors from the golden age of crime like Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Edgar Allen Poe etc. As an avid vintage crime fan this began to excite me as a concept a lot more! Obviously, it has been developed by the Italians during that period and then moved into film but it meant I understood the combination of a detection type story along with the Hitchcock type visuals and slasher movie feel of the action.
The only criticism is that I felt the characters could have shown a bit more empathy and awareness of their situation. There is no way I would have been able to go about my normal daily existence knowing that so many people were being murdered in such close proximity. Apart from that I enjoyed all the characters personalities, especially that of the protagonist Eve. I can see how she reflects the traditional giallo themes of a foreigner being placed into a unique environment and having to deal with the murders. Plus, the influence of the detection side of the golden age crime was also prevalent in her story as she tries to work out who the killer is herself! Now, I did manage to pick up on the clues on who the killer was but then I am a huge vintage crime reader - my occupation is even selling these books - so it's not a reflection of the narrative being weak! Because it is not! I found there were a lot of ideas and strands emerging as the story progressed, there were red herrings galore and enough twists and turns to keep you guessing and to grip the reader! I flew through this in a day and loved it!
I adore the cover of this novel but then I love the hark back to retro covers with the styling of it. Plus, the original ‘giallo’ covers were always yellow, the term ‘giallo’ actually means yellow in Italian! So whoever, designed this cover well done! It is superb.
This was a great read and I learned something new as well! Always a bonus. I really recommend this one.
I came into this book blind - as in the case I didn’t know anything about the term ‘giallo’. A lot of the reviews of ‘Five Deaths’ mention this term and reference the film they believe this novel is based upon. So I did a lot of googling and found that the wiki page was actually very informative so I will drop the link here;
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giallo
What I discovered is that the idea of this regional genre felt more accessible when I realised that the original books were translations of authors from the golden age of crime like Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Edgar Allen Poe etc. As an avid vintage crime fan this began to excite me as a concept a lot more! Obviously, it has been developed by the Italians during that period and then moved into film but it meant I understood the combination of a detection type story along with the Hitchcock type visuals and slasher movie feel of the action.
The only criticism is that I felt the characters could have shown a bit more empathy and awareness of their situation. There is no way I would have been able to go about my normal daily existence knowing that so many people were being murdered in such close proximity. Apart from that I enjoyed all the characters personalities, especially that of the protagonist Eve. I can see how she reflects the traditional giallo themes of a foreigner being placed into a unique environment and having to deal with the murders. Plus, the influence of the detection side of the golden age crime was also prevalent in her story as she tries to work out who the killer is herself! Now, I did manage to pick up on the clues on who the killer was but then I am a huge vintage crime reader - my occupation is even selling these books - so it's not a reflection of the narrative being weak! Because it is not! I found there were a lot of ideas and strands emerging as the story progressed, there were red herrings galore and enough twists and turns to keep you guessing and to grip the reader! I flew through this in a day and loved it!
I adore the cover of this novel but then I love the hark back to retro covers with the styling of it. Plus, the original ‘giallo’ covers were always yellow, the term ‘giallo’ actually means yellow in Italian! So whoever, designed this cover well done! It is superb.
This was a great read and I learned something new as well! Always a bonus. I really recommend this one.