Shoreham & Southwick

Murder Mystery Books 3

This group explores a different murder mystery novel each month.

We meet from September to July on the 3rd Friday of the month in Southwick.
We are a friendly group which explores a different murder mystery novel each month over a cup of coffee.

One of our aims is to introduce group members to crime writers we may not have come across, and that is our intention for the future.

Over time we've read books by crime writers from Australia, India, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, the USA, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany and France - as well as UK.

Purely for fun, group members score each month’s book on a 1 to 10 scale with a view to our declaring the highest scoring book our ‘Murder Mystery of the Year’.

What sort of things do we discuss?
Many of the things that any books group would discuss, but perhaps with a few additions. For example:

• First and foremost, did we enjoy reading the book!
• Was the book well written?
• Were the characters believable?
• Did we get a sense of place, be it another town, another country or a specific workplace or environment?
• Did it have a good plot and have something different to offer?
• Did we want to keep turning the page, or not?
• Were there ‘twists in the tale’?
• Was the book the right length with every page earning its keep - or was it padded?
• Was the perpetrator of the crime too obvious from too early in the book?
• Was any violence gratuitous, or any police procedure unnecessary to the plot - just for the sake of it?
• Were we provided with believable evidence of the perpetrators means, motive and opportunity?
• If by an established author, was there evidence of them taking their readers for granted – trading on their reputation and not producing ‘the goods’?
• Would we read another book by the same author?

For more information about the group, please send a message via the email link on this page. Please be sure to mention the group name in your message.