I really wanted to like this book more than I did. It sounded great, a metafictional murder mystery that is also commentary on the genre itself and our love of it, but the author was trying so hard to be "clever". The constant asides and pauses to comment on tropes in mystery fiction was fun at first but as it went on McDorman did less analyzing of the cliches and more just pointed them out as if to say "See? Aren't I smart for noticing that particular common story beat? Anyways, onto the next one". By the end the thing basically turns into an essay and entirely abandons the "story" element of this "meta story". So all in all it was fun at first but got pretty drab to read by the end.