Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
You know Johnny Hawke. Hard-bitten LAPD homicide detective. Always in trouble with his captain, always losing partners, but always battling for the truth, whatever it takes.
You know Penny Coyne. The little old lady who has solved multiple murders in her otherwise sleepy village, despite bumbling local police. A razor-sharp mind in a Sunday best hat.
Against all the odds, against the usual story, their worlds are about to collide. It starts with a dead writer and a mysterious wedding invitation. It will end with a rabbit hole that goes so deep, Johnny and Penny might just come to question not just whodunnit, but whether they want to know the answer.
Miss Marple meets Michael Connelly could be an easy tagline for award-winning Scottish author Chris Brookmyre’s superb new novel, but that distillation severely underplays all that is going on in The Cracked Mirror, a truly mind-bending mystery.
Yes, Penny Coyne is a tweed-wearing, elderly librarian in a sleepy Scottish village who has helped the local constabulary solve many murders (or done so despite their bumbling). And yes, Johnny Hawke is a hard-bitten LAPD homicide detective with a maverick streak who’s willing to bend the rules to find the truth and catch the bad guys. More interested in justice than procedures and rules.
At the start, as Brookmyre flicks readers between unfolding mysteries in Scotland and Los Angeles, it almost seems like The Cracked Mirror is two books that have been misprinted into one. A cocktail of sub-genres, individually tasty yet unusually mixed. Then Penny and Johnny’s worlds begin to mesh, as she answers a mysterious wedding invitation at a Scottish manor, and Johnny trails a person of interest to the very same venue. Coincidence, or something bigger at play. As the oddball pairing are thrust together, The Cracked Mirror becomes a helter-skelter thrill ride that will have readers furrowing their brow and whirring through the pages.
Are the echoes among some tragic suicides coincidence or something worse? Why are Penny’s local police targetting Johnny, a fellow cop even if one from across the pond? As the stakes are raised and the action intensifies, Brookmyre rides the absurdity curve to something wonderfully creative and masterfully told. The Cracked Mirror is a crime tale with storytelling at its heart – the trail Penny and Johnny follow snakes through screenwriting, book publishing, and video games companies – and with plenty of heart among the hurly burly and high stakes. Some wonderful easter eggs for genre fans, too.
Overall, The Cracked Mirror is a terrific tale that’s unlike anything else you’ll probably read this year, and in a strong year with plenty of outstanding contenders, I've got to agree that it was a worthy recent winner of the 2024 McIlvanney Prize, the annual prize for best Scottish crime book of the year.
Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.
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