A review by hannahstohelit
The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake

dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

4.25

All things being equal I'd probably have kept this closer to a 4, but I do want to give it an extra quarter point for its emotional resonance at the beginning- the book's rendition of a father's raw grief was really well done and affecting. 

As a novel, I'd say it was interesting, well written, and well done. Nigel Strangeways has never been one of my favorite detectives in the short stories I've seen him in, but here I enjoyed him, even as he didn't necessarily acquit himself brilliantly from the start. I'd also add that this book has one of the better sketched out children in murder mystery fiction of the era. But...

it's just not a mystery. If the diary had been how the whole book was going to be narrated, I'd have suspended my disbelief for the sake of the interesting device. As soon as it was made clear that the diary was NOT just a narrative device but a PHYSICAL THING that existed in the context of the book, the man who not just kept writing it but left it around to be found had to be either an absolute idiot or someone trying to play 3D chess. Of the two options, only one made any sense, so there was very little suspense from that perspective, not to mention basically no clues making any specific other characters particularly suspicious vs others. At a certain point, if it had been anyone BUT Felix, the design of the story would have made no sense, and as Strangeways points out, Felix's plan was predicated on the mystery writer's brain being the only one that needed to create or solve the puzzle, and just would not work on an actual crime with actual cops who believe that the person who planned and attempted to kill a person who ended up dead is the most likely one to have done it. There never seemed to be any real mystery and while it was enjoyable as a novel, the attempt to make it seem like it wasn't an inverted mystery felt like denying the obvious

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