The Stranger Diaries - Elly Griffiths
Perspective is perhaps the most important factor in any crime novel, since you’re completely dependent on what the narrator tells you, which is why many crime fiction novels have multiple perspectives from different characters. It’s a literary device, and it’s one that any crime writer will be aware of and use to their advantage, not so much to provide a wider view as provide conflicting views that add to the mystery and tension. Take this far enough and you have Elly Griffiths' The Stranger Diaries , where literary references and creative writing techniques all play a part in the construction and purpose of the crime, creating a little masterclass of crime writing, as well as being a clever little crime fiction mystery in itself. The Stranger Diaries even opens with a little bit of literary trickery that sets the tone quite effectively. A man sits down in a train carriage on a presumably dark and stormy evening and proceeds to tell the person sharing the carriage the strange even...