The Cracked Mirror

Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780349145815

Price: £9.99

ON SALE: 1st May 2025

Genre: Fiction & Related Items / Thriller / Suspense

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***Winner of the McIlvanney Award for Best Scottish Crime Book of the Year***

FORGET WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW
THIS IS NOT THAT CRIME NOVEL


You know Penny Coyne. The little old lady who has solved multiple murders in her otherwise sleepy village, despite bumbling local police. A razor-sharp mind in a twinset and tweed.

You know Johnny Hawke. Hard-bitten LAPD homicide detective. Always in trouble with his captain, always losing partners, but always battling for the truth, whatever it takes.

Against all the odds, against the usual story, their worlds are about to collide. It starts with a dead writer and a mysterious wedding invitation. It will end with a rabbit hole that goes so deep, Johnny and Penny might come to question not just whodunnit, but whether they want to know the answer.

A cross-genre hybrid of Agatha Christie and Michael Connelly, The Cracked Mirror is the most imaginative and entertaining crime novel of the year, a genre-splicing rollercoaster with a poignantly emotional heart.

Reviews

Chris Brookmyre is a magician with words and his latest sleight-of-hand will have you asking "How did he do that?!" So clever, witty and rewarding
Ian Rankin
The Cracked Mirror is like no other thriller I've ever read. It blows the crime genre to pieces and then puts it back together again in the most astonishing way possible. Give it all the awards now because this is the most original crime novel of the year
Mark Billingham
The ceaselessly inventive Chris Brookmyre . . . Brookmyre's most ambitious novel to date - which is saying something - The Cracked Mirror is a tour de force of high-wire plate-spinning
Irish Times
Action-packed, the plot makes you wonder what the inside of Brookmyre's head is like - as where it ends up isn't what you expect from the start
Irish News
This is ingenious, inventive and groundbreaking. Crime fiction at its very best
Scottish Field
Cutting-edge . . . a brainteaser energised by its narrative splicings. The unlikely duo of Coyne and Hawke unravelling a mystifyingly complex plot is always stimulating
Financial Times
A mind-boggling murder mystery . . . [an] ambitious and affectionate celebration of the many-spendoured crime genre
The Times
An entertaining and thrillingly original adventure
Best Magazine
A truly masterful and mind-blowing murder mystery that will crash through your every expectation and blow it to smithereens. 'Cracking' dialogue, vivid characters and the sort of genre-busting twists and turns that will leave you reeling in their wake
Janice Hallett
Only the genius that is Chris Brookmyre could take familiar elements from the crime genre and turn them into something new, unpredictable and completely joyful. The Cracked Mirror is an original and hugely entertaining novel that will make readers guess and guess again
Jane Casey
A glorious masterpiece of captivating storytelling and genre. I've never read anything that works on so many levels at once. An unputdownable delight, especially if being stabbed in a public toilet is your thing
Denise Mina
The most original thriller you'll read this year. Hugely ambitious and deeply rewarding, The Cracked Mirror is a mystery like no other. Inventive, emotional and exhilarating
Chris Whitaker
From page to page I couldn't believe what I was reading. Astonishing. Clever. Bewildering and unique. Only Chris Brookmyre could have pulled this off. He's a genius
Stuart Turton
A work of mind-bending escapist genius
Sunday Post
The most purely enjoyable crime novel of the year
Jenny Colgan
This is the most deceptive thriller I've ever read. What an adventure.
Liz Nugent