Written by Joanne Fluke
SUMMARY:
Released in 2016 by Kensington Cozies, this 232-page murder-mystery is set in the sizzling hot summer of 1995 at an unnamed college in proximity to the Hampton Cove beach. Joining her boyfriend, Ryan Young, college socialite Eve Carrington utilizes her wealthy father’s connections finagling an invite to a month-long creative writing workshop held on campus.
Along with eight other college students, Eve & Ryan will spend a month living together at the dilapidated Sutler Mansion, as they work on their prospective books under Professor Hellman’s supervision. As judged by Hellman, the top three books will be submitted for consideration by his New York publishing contacts.
One of the writing projects is Angela Adams’ murder-mystery based upon the workshop and the participants themselves. Not only is Eve fuming over Angela initiating a love triangle over Ryan, she is quickly jealous of Angela’s knack for ingratiating herself with the project’s participants. Once Hellman is sidelined by a contagious illness, the ten students must be quarantined to the mansion for at least ten days.
Targeted by an unknown serial killer, the novice writers realize that their dire predicament is mirrored by Angela’s novel-in-progress, as they are murdered one by one.
Notes: Oddly, the back cover synopsis is inaccurate re: the mansion being a last-minute substitute for the workshop’s location. Contradicting this synopsis, the novel specifies that Sutler Mansion is the workshop’s site from the get-go. Re: a Hampton Cove beach, there’s a real locale in Florida, but Fluke is vague as to any geography.
REVIEW:
Wicked ‘s true culprit is irony. Perhaps unwittingly, the ludicrous Wicked reads like an Agatha Christie rip-off an aspiring novelist might have devised for a creative writing class. Joanne Fluke repeatedly acknowledges the Christie novel that Wicked mimics by even having the students watch a film version of And Then There Were None (aka Ten Little Indians), as it is Angela’s inspiration for her book.
Yet, Fluke’s shallow ensemble cast is nothing more than a cliché-fest, i.e. Eve is a Veronica Lodge knock-off going by another name. It’s almost too coincidental that Angela’s physical description suspiciously resembles Betty Cooper. One wonders if that means the two-timing Ryan must be an indecisive redhead with freckles.
Aside from the characters being uniformly weak, what sinks Wicked is that its Hollywood slasher schlock plot is so implausible. Case in point: would anyone really believe, quarantine or not, that, upon the first homicide, the others wouldn’t be fleeing for the cops?
Storing a rising number of corpses in a walk-in freezer and continuing on with one’s day occurs in even some good mysteries, but Wicked surely isn’t among them. One could argue that Fluke’s inconclusive twist finish is an imaginative way to justify 225+ pages of flimsy plotting. The flip side, of course, is that this movie-style cop-out then renders the novel’s prior shenanigans as pointless. Either way, such derivative storytelling confirms Wicked as a woeful murder-mystery from start to finish.
Included samples from other Fluke works indicate that she’s a popular writer for a reason. Suffice to say, the eye-rolling Wicked demonstrates what happens when she isn’t on her game.
ADDITIONAL FEATURES:
There’s approximately seventy-two pages of padding. Extended samples of two of Fluke’s other novels: Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder and Wedding Cake Murder, include recipes.
BRIAN’S ODD MOON RATING: 2½ Stars
