THE OTHER HALF | Charlotte Vassell
11.21.2023 | Anchor
Rating: 4.5/5 stars
You know how they live. This is how they die…
Rupert’s 30th birthday party is a black-tie dinner at the Kentish Town McDonald’s—catered with cocaine and expensive champagne. The morning after, his girlfriend Clemmie is found murdered on Hampstead Heath, a single stiletto heel jutting from under a bush.
Who killed Clemmie? Was it the blithe, sociopathic boyfriend? His impossibly wealthy godmother? The gallery owner with whom Clemmie was having an affair? Or was it the result of something else entirely?
All the party-goers have alibis. Naturally. This investigation is going to be about aristocrats and Classics degrees, Instagram influencers and whose father knows who.
Or is it ‘whom’? Detective Caius Beauchamp isn’t sure. He’s sharply dressed, smart, and thoroughly modern—he discovers Clemmie’s body on his early morning jog. As he searches for the dark truth beneath the luxurious life of these London socialites, a wall of staggering wealth and privilege threatens to shut down his investigation before it’s even begun. Can Caius peer through the tangled mess of connections in which the other half live—and die—before the case is wrenched from his hands? Bitingly funny, full of shocking twists, and all too familiar.
Things I love in crime fiction: detectives and rich people problems. Charlotte Vassell came through for my reading heart with top notch representations of both in The Other Half.
From the very start Vassell was able to form a bond for me with multiple characters: the one I hate (Rupert), the one I worry about (Nell), and the one I’m cheering for (Detective Caius). Every character in this book is realistic, even those who seem a bit over-the-top, are just ridiculous enough to feel like you would roll your eyes at them just as much in real life as in the book.
Vassell’s characters have a strong relationship core, with many of them knowing each other for a decade or more. That bond leads to the inclusion of past events that I thought really helped to keep the story solid. They not only help the reader understand some of the actions of our characters, but they added a level of depth to the story that would have been missing without.
🎧: I snagged a physical copy of this one for my shelves, but ended up listening to it over audio on my commute to and from work. This was the perfect escape!
What Jess Reads 