A review by hirvimaki
Inherit the Dead by Jonathan Santlofer

4.0

Ever since I found The Floating Admiral on the shelves of my bibliophile mother's workroom and was pulled into that fascinating literary game of consequences, I have been rather enthralled with the idea of a single, cohesive narrative written by multiple authors. The whodunit variant has been done countless times since the famous Detection Club (Christie, Sayers, Chesterton, Whitechurch, the Coles, Wade, Rhode, Kennedy, Knox, Crofts, Jepson, Dane, and Berkeley! Oh my!) published The Floating Admiral in 1931. Some good. Some stinkers. And I've read most of them. This is a pretty good one. It's not ground-breaking, but the mystery is sufficiently mysterious and watching the twists and turns as each author takes the wheel is a lot of fun, especially if you are familiar with the authors' bodies of work. Imperfect, because serial-novels always are - and that's part of the fun - it draws you in with interesting characters and a remarkably cohesive plot for something written by 20 people. There is no way that Lee Child will come across as Charlaine Harris or that Mary Higgins Clark will have the same focus as Heather Graham, but with Jonathan Santlofer's gentle guidance, the story moves pretty smoothly throughout. A good read.