Title: A Testament to Murder
Author: Vivian Conroy
Series: Murder Will Follow #1
Pub Date: February 18th 2019
A dying billionaire. Nine would-be heirs. But only one will take the prize…
At the lush Villa Calypso on the French Riviera, a dying billionaire launches a devious plan: at midnight each day he appoints a new heir to his vast fortune. If he dies within 24 hours, that person takes it all. If not, their chance is gone forever.
Yet these are no ordinary beneficiaries, these men who crossed him, women who deceived him, and distant relations intent on reclaiming the family fortune. All are determined to lend death a hand and outwit their rivals in pursuit of the prize.
As tensions mount with every passing second retired Scotland Yard investigator Jasper must stay two steps ahead of every player if he hopes to prevent the billionaire’s devious game from becoming a testament to murder…
Rating: 246/5 shocking plot-twists (aka too much)
This book was always a bit too much. The hated dying family patriarch who is playing a game with his will? Not uncommon in mysteries. But the game being “I change my will every day and leave everything to one person” instead of constant threats of disinheriting and allusions to maybe mentioning certain people? A bit too much. The prospective heirs who all want the money and all have major – often exaggerated – character flaws? Not uncommon at all. But when the characters are only exaggerated flaws – the would-be-artist nephew who never finishes anything, his wife who laments there that she had though marrying someone with a double-barred surname would mean more money, the secretary who is obsessed with her boss, the parents who do anything to hide her son’s fuck-ups, the son who…constantly fucks up – that’s just too much.
And the same was true for the plot. Too many coincidences. Too many shocking plot twists. I genuinely enjoyed some of them, but at some point, it just turned into another and another and another and I stopped being surprised and just rolled my eyes a lot.
I’m not completely averse to trying another book by the author in case this was an attempt at a parody and the characters in her other books are not quite as much of a caricature but I’m not rushing out to get one right now.
ARC received from NetGalley
