The Colour of Murder

⚖The case for it

Symons does lean on one trick, and the middle stretch may feel slow to anyone wanting motion. The reward comes to those who keep going. John Wilkins narrates his suffocating marriage and his ache for a young librarian in a voice always sliding off what he means, so that his own account keeps betraying him before anyone else weighs in. The menace here is domestic and quiet, the sentences plain and precise. Beside that patient watching, the neat wrap-ups of ordinary mystery writing feel like a shrug.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Built as a long first-person statement followed by a courtroom reconstruction, the novel grinds its gears at the changeover. Wilkins is a specimen more than a man, pinned for the class anatomy of 1950s lower-middle suburbia. If you require a verdict you can trust, the engineered ambiguity will land as a cheat.

— the honest librarian