CANR
WORK TITLE: The In Crowd
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WEBSITE: https://www.charlottevassell.co.uk/
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NATIONALITY: British
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RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Graduated from University of Liverpool; School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, master’s degree; attended Drama Studio London.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Has worked in advertisting, personnel, and haberdashery.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
[open new]Charlotte Vassell is a British crime writer with a penchant for deconstructive satire. She has Jamaican heritage through her father, and she was raised alongside a brother. Meditating on her interest in criminal justice in an Irish Times essay, Vassell related, “I watched a lot of Agatha Christie as a child with my beloved grandmother and Miss Marple seeped into my soul.” She studied history at the University of Liverpool and earned a master’s in art history at SOAS, University of London. After training as an actor at Drama Studio London, she focused on establishing a theatrical career in the late 2010s. Furloughed during the pandemic, she developed a novel idea first imagined in 2015 to craft her debut mystery, The Other Half.
Commenting on the literary depths of the crime-fiction genre in a Waterstones piece, Vassell suggested: “To my mind every crime novel … is fundamentally concerned with the state of the nation. Every cosy village, every windswept isle, every B&B on the coast is a confected proxy for our world. Crime novels cannot be detached from wider society. … Every crime novel, then, is an act of creative sociology.” Going deeper into the writing of her first novel in her Irish Times essay, Vassell explained: “I wrote a crime novel over lockdown because I was bored but also deeply frustrated with the world. Murder is unnatural, it’s wrong. Crime is fundamentally political. It is a violation of the social contract that we are all bound by, and this violent act allows us to poke holes in the fabric of society, to find the loose threads and dropped stitches.”
Setting The Other Half in motion is the lavish thirtieth birthday party of Rupert Beauchamp, soon to be a baron, ironically held at a London McDonald’s. The abundant fast food, champagne, and cocaine lead up to a death: that of Clemmie O’Hara, Rupert’s influencer girlfriend. Her body is found on a heath by Jamaican British detective inspector Caius Beauchamp (no relation to Rupert) of the Metropolitan Police. Rupert had been considering leaving Clemmie for Nell, a literary press editor who turns out to have endured something traumatic when the three were in Greece together. Several other people might have motives, but Caius’s suspicions incline—against his class-conscious boss’s wishes—toward Rupert himself.
Reviewers were impressed with The Other Half and its prominent strain of satire. A Publishers Weekly reviewer affirmed that Vassell’s “crackling debut skewers England’s current crop of gilded youth” as it “gleefully plunges into the underbelly of 21st-century entitlement.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor observed that “race and privilege light the fuse in this classics-laced … dead-on debut.” The contributor affirmed that Vassell has produced a “sturdy police procedural” but acknowledged that the mystery is sometimes “knocked off kilter” by the narrator’s character takedowns. The Kirkus Reviews writer went on to affirm that the “forthright Caius is a beacon of justice who makes this debut shine,” and the Publishers Weekly reviewer praised The Other Half as a “diamond-sharp satirical whodunit.”
Caius Beauchamp returns with The In Crowd, when the discovery of a body by a rowing team on the Thames just might represent a break in a pair of cold cases. Thirty years ago, a multimillion-dollar pension fund was pilfered, apparently by an apparel executive who disappeared without a trace. Fifteen years ago, a teenage girl went missing from a Cornish boarding school where reports of abuse have been coming to light. Whlle trying to crack these cases, Caius deals with casual racism on the part of Britain’s upper crust and gets distracted by potential romance with fashionable milliner Callie Foster. Callie may be a key witness—and gets pursued by an all-too-familiar predator.
Finding this novel “smart, provocative” and “satisfying,” a Kirkus Reviews writer declared that Vassell “perfectly constructs a classic crime procedural against a backdrop of racism, sexism, and classism.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer remarked that Vassell “has wicked fun shifting narrators and timelines, and her satire remains sharp.” Affirming Caius to be a “winning character readers will adore,” the Kirkus Reviews writer hailed The In Crowd as a “stellar sophomore outing for an intriguing detective.”[close new]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2023, review of The Other Half; July 1, 2024, review of The In Crowd.
Publishers Weekly, September 18, 2023, review of The Other Half, p. 40; June 24, 2024, review of The In Crowd, p. 42.
ONLINE
Charlotte Vassell website, https://www.charlottevassell.co.uk (September 11, 2024).
Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/ (February 3, 2023), Charlotte Vassell, “If the Police Are No Longer Trusted Then How Can They Be the Heroes of Crime Novels?”
Silver Hand, https://silverhandjournal.com/ (September 11, 2024), Hannah Kiernan, review of The Other Half.
Waterstones website, https://www.waterstones.com/ (October 1, 2023), “Charlotte Vassell on Satire in Crime and Crime in Satire.”
Writer’s Digest, https://www.writersdigest.com/ (November 21, 2023), Robert Lee Brewer, “Charlotte Vassell: Read Widely and Critically.”
Charlotte studied History at the University of Liverpool and completed a Master’s in Art History at SOAS before training as an actor at Drama Studio London. Other than treading the boards Charlotte has also worked in advertising, in executive search and as a purveyor of silk top hats.
Charlotte Vassell: Read Widely and Critically
Author Charlotte Vassell discusses all the surprises and learning moments with publishing her debut crime novel, The Other Half.
Robert Lee BrewerNov 21, 2023
Charlotte Vassell is a British writer living near London. She studied history at the University of Liverpool and art history at SOAS, University of London, before training as an actor. She has also worked in advertising, executive search, and as a purveyor of silk top hats. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Charlotte Vassell: Read Widely and Critically
In this post, Charlotte discusses all the surprises and learning moments with publishing her debut crime novel, The Other Half, and more!
Name: Charlotte Vassell
Literary agent: Jon Wood, Rogers Coleridge & White
Book title: The Other Half
Publisher: Anchor
Release date: November 21, 2023
Genre/category: Crime
Elevator pitch for the book: A beautiful socialite and influencer is found brutally murdered on Hampstead Heath on the night her aristocratic boyfriend is ironically hosting his orgiastic, black tie 30th birthday party in a nearby McDonald’s. DI Caius Beauchamp tries to solve case as he navigates an entitled world of Oxford Classics degrees and inherited privileges in this modern, satirical take on the British whodunnit tradition.
Charlotte Vassell: Read Widely and Critically
Bookshop | Amazon
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What prompted you to write this book?
I had the initial idea in 2015 but it wasn’t until I was furloughed during the pandemic that I got a chance to finally sit down and write this cast of awful characters into existence.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
8 years in total. I started the first draft of what became The Other Half in April 2020 and finished it by July. I had made two previous attempts at it, one in 2015 and again in 2017, but I hadn’t quite found the right dynamic between Rupert and his friends to propel the story forward and abandoned those early drafts whilst I focused on my acting career.
Charlotte Vassell: Read Widely and Critically
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
This is my first novel, so everything has been either a surprise or a learning moment. Truly though the greatest and most welcome surprise is finding myself published at all.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I had very loosely planned the book and was quite taken by surprise when the killer turned out to be someone else entirely.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
A good time!
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Read widely and critically.
Charlotte Vassell on Satire in Crime and Crime in Satire
Posted on 1st October 2023 by Anna Orhanen
Charlotte Vassell's The Other Half, our Thriller of the Month for October, is a brilliantly plotted and deliciously sly crime debut, featuring an ambitious young detective who finds herself solving a murder in the debauched world of rich and privileged North Londoners. In this exclusive piece, the author discusses the way good crime stories double as studies in sociology and shares her favourite books that exemplify the rich satirical possibilities of crime fiction.
To my mind every crime novel has the potential to be satirical, as each and every one is fundamentally concerned with the state of the nation. Every cosy village, every windswept isle, every B&B on the coast is a confected proxy for our world. Crime novels cannot be detached from wider society: even if that society appears to be made up of good-natured citizens lawfully going about their business, it is not. It cannot be, otherwise there would never be any murders, there would be no blackmail, no embezzlement, and no stolen jewels. Agatha Christie knew this; that’s why in her novels so many of the middle-class pillars of twentieth-century England turn out to be rotten through and through. Every crime novel, then, is an act of creative sociology, but how satirical is purely down to the writer’s individual taste. I personally profess a deep love of taking the piss and think it’s a highly effective mode of social criticism. Richard Osman himself, the king of cozy crime, describes his own work in these terms: ‘If you want to know what Britain is like, there are many very, very posh state-of-the-nation novels you could read but I do think that The Thursday Murder Club is not a bad place to start.’
Crime novels come in certain flavours, and I have my favourites, but those that I love all have a satirical cherry on the top that highlights the absurdity and the hypocrisy of our world. My favourite ’sub-genres’ are as follows: picturesque community concealing huge problems; true crime gives me feelings; serial killer goes off on a cultural odyssey between killings; lady killers with family issues; and serious satirical novels that pretend they aren’t crime novels, but I know the truth.
One of my favourite small community/big problems novels is The Appeal. Janice Hallett’s first novel creates a tight little world of overblown am-dram egos in a low-budget production. As a former actor I revel in the drama between rehearsals. M. C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin and The Quiche of Death is another favourite of the sub-genre with its picturesque Cotswold cottages, chintz and passive turned full-on aggression. To me it is a perfect example of the maladaptation of floral dress-wearing women who stake their egos on the village baking competition.
I have immensely enjoyed the recent splattering of novels exploring the far-too-human cost of the true crime genre. These are creepy, uneasy tales that contain keenly precise and often absurd observations that can be nothing but simultaneously amusing and terrifying. Eliza Clark’s Penance, the multi-layered story of a murdered schoolgirl, is set in a post-Brexit, floundering UK seaside resort with deep-seated problems including a spate of attempted donkey stranglings. Clark sharply slices straight through online true crime fandom. Alice Slater’s Death of a Bookseller briefly feels like a love letter to bookshops, but the waters are quickly muddied by true-crime junkie Roach’s burning obsession for her seemingly ‘normie’ new colleague Laura, who is herself plagued with the legacy of violent crime. Both novels teeter on the fine line between true crime as harmless entertainment and as deadly inspiration.
American Psycho was one of the first books that I had to read in instalments because I found the gore within it too much for my then naïve teenage sensibilities. Easton-Ellis’s account of horrific and yet charismatic Patrick Bateman is both a shockingly gruesome and a sublimely absurd take-down of the exploitative financier class. The meditation on Whitney Houston’s oeuvre is astounding. Chelsea G. Summer’s A Certain Hunger hits a similar note, pairing delicious gourmet meals with the perfect wine, all the while detailing Dorothy Daniels’s depravity.
How To Kill Your Family, Bella Mackie’s popular novel reminds me of the classic Ealing comedy Kind Hearts & Coronets, with the anti-heroine bumping off her estranged, wealthy father’s family in the hope of retribution. In a similar vein My Sister The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite is also overtly concerned with family dynamics and the domestic repercussions of having a beautiful sister who men foolishly keep falling for and who’s also a little too handy with a knife.
If satire and crime were a spectrum, then at the very end you’d find P.G. Wodehouse – something illegal happens in many of his novels – and then perhaps Evelyn Waugh. Decline and Fall, the story of Paul Pennyfeather’s sending down from Oxford after being the victim of a Bullingdonesque group of students, eventually descends farcically into human trafficking via a mediocre boys’ school in North Wales and a litany of ludicrous characters. As far as I am concerned it is a satire with a very dark core. My own work, I like to hope at least, is a nod to this very British tradition using the murder of Clemmie O’Hara, a wealthy Instagram influencer, to explore class in Britain.
If the police are no longer trusted then how can they be the heroes of crime novels?
Debut crime writer Charlotte Vassell’s solution is a detective who doesn’t trust the system either
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Charlotte Vassell, author of The Other Half. Photograph: Hayley Benoit
Charlotte Vassell
Fri Feb 03 2023 - 04:35
I was almost mugged in 2015. Two kids, and they really were just kids, on their bikes grabbed my headphones and tried to take my phone with it. All they got away with was my cheap Flying Tiger headphones which sounded tinny anyway. I reported it to the police, ‘for your statistics’, and a polite officer came round to my flat, took my statement at my kitchen table, and left. That was it. I’d done my duty as a citizen, and he had done his. That is the sum of my personal experience with the police. It was just as it should have been.
It’s the August bank holiday in 2017, my brother and I were sat on the grass in a little square off Portobello Road. It’s sunny. Magnificent. We’ve had a couple of cans of cold Red Stripe sold by someone from their front porch and we’d had a glorious hour dancing to Sister Nancy remixes. My brother was wearing the Jamaican flag that he had bought on the walk down from Notting Hill Tube station like a superhero cape and eating ackee from a food vendor who was surprised that I knew what a Johnny cake was when I asked for one.
Our father’s family are Jamaican, but we pair look Mediterranean. My brother has never been stopped and searched. We watch as a couple of police officers start talking to a young white woman who had been clearly dealing. They escort her away. My brother turns to me and wonders ‘would they have been that nice if she was black?’ We look at each other and raise our eyebrows. We’ve both heard the stories our father tells about being young and black in the eighties when people couldn’t be bothered to hide their prejudices in the way that they do now behind encrypted messaging services.
It’s spring 2020, the pandemic is raging despite the birds chirping outside and I’m stuck in my flat watching reruns of Bones in between drafts of a novel that is the only thing getting me up in the morning. I check my phone and see that it’s happened again. I temporarily delete the Twitter app from my phone because I feel sick as I scroll through – my usual diet of cat memes and literary fluff replaced by howling injustice. My best friend calls and says that she keeps crying. We don’t understand how the world can be this awful.
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If I could have persuaded myself to detach from the events unfolding in Minnesota and torn myself away from the news reports coming in, if I had lost my ability to weep for another life pointlessly lost, told myself that it was in another country, it was America and they are so messed up over there, and the situation was nothing like how things are here in the UK then I would have been lying. I don’t need to list the names of the people failed by the police – I say failed, but I mean killed, violated, humiliated, dehumanised – we’ve all read the same news reports.
Do you trust the police? If something terrible happened, would you trust them to help you, to protect you? I’m not entirely sure that I would anymore. The world feels too different from 2015 – this is the darkest timeline. There’s something between brutal cuts to police budgets by the ideology-driven idiots in power and the police’s apparently wilful prejudiced incompetence that makes me unsure. If I was burgled, I’m sure a diligent officer would come, survey the scene, fingerprints would be taken and they would say how sorry they were that it happened and then get so swamped in paperwork that means they don’t actually get to do much policing. I wouldn’t hear from anyone ever again and then receive an email a year later saying my case file had been closed.
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We all have heard an anecdote from a female friend who calls up about a ‘pesky ex’ who terrifies them only to not really be taken seriously, to be told that he’s been spoken to, and he didn’t really mean any harm. We’ve all read articles about the WhatsApp groups that officers make jokes at our expense on; poking fun at ethnic minorities, or women or LGBTQ+ people – which if you think about it, when all those groups are combined it’s actually most of us. Is your safety a joke?
I would at this point like to state that I don’t hate the police. I don’t think they’re all bad, that they’re all incompetent, but there are enough of them that are and prop up a system that is fundamentally unjust.
*
I watched a lot of Agatha Christie as a child with my beloved grandmother and Miss Marple seeped into my soul. Christie’s detectives are not police. I’ve wondered as to why that is and have decided that it is so that Miss Marple can move freely amongst suspects who think she’s just an old dear and Poirot can stay at grand country houses as a guest and complain about the cold.
I wrote a crime novel over lockdown because I was bored but also deeply frustrated with the world. Murder is unnatural, it’s wrong. Crime is fundamentally political. It is a violation of the social contract that we are all bound by, and this violent act allows us to poke holes in the fabric of society, to find the loose threads and dropped stitches. Britain is a deeply fractured society. This isn’t my opinion. This is fact. The system is not fair to all – it discriminates against people based on their class, their race, their religion, their sexual orientation, their bodies.
Ian Rankin, godfather of the contemporary crime novel, said in an interview in 2021 on The Cultural Coven podcast that ‘in the current state of the world, how can you write about a police officer and make them the goodies, when we look around us and see that so often the police are not the goodies? They’re not the knights in shining armour protecting all and sundry from whatever evil happens to be out there. So there’s big questions coming for people who write police procedurals.’
My answer to that is that they can’t trust the system either. They have to see the injustices and rail against them. My main character, DI Caius Beauchamp, a young mixed-race idealist, is in the Met. He is principled. No one spoke to him at the last Christmas party because he called out a popular racist colleague. He suffered for that. In fiction as in life those who push against the system are pushed back against in return.
The Other Half by Charlotte Vassell is published by Faber
Charlotte Vassell
© Hayley Benoit
Charlotte Vassell studied History at the University of Liverpool and completed a Masters in Art History at SOAS, University of London, before training as an actor at Drama Studio London. Other than treading the boards Charlotte has also worked in advertising, executive search, and as a purveyor of silk top hats.
Books in order of publication:
The Other Half (2023)
The In Crowd (2024)
Agent: Jon Wood
The Other Half
Charlotte Vassell. Anchor, $27 (368p) ISBN 978-0-593-68594-5
Vassell's crackling debut skewers England's current crop of gilded youth. Rich, handsome Rupert Beauchamp, who's about to inherit a title, throws himself a lavish 30th birthday party in London's buzzy Kentish Town: it's an ironic black-rie affair at the local McDonald's, catered with buckets of champagne and mountains of cocaine. The next morning, while British-Jamaican detective Caius Beauchamp (no relation to Rupert) is out jogging, he happens upon the corpse of Rupert's influencer girlfriend, Clemmie, in Hampstead Heath. Given that all the party attendees have alibis, the obvious suspect is Nell, a beautiful editor at a literary press whom Rupert has long planned to leave Clemmie for. Nell, however, has grown ambivalent about Rupert and his social circle, so Caius pursues other leads as well. His search takes him through a web of overprivileged suspects on whom the detective casts a half-contemptuous, half-envious eye, and eventually delivers him to the doorstep of a murderous, elite conspiracy. Vassell gleefully plunges into the underbelly of 21st-century entitlement, creating vivid sketches of aimless young Londoners gorging on designer clothes and designer drugs--sometimes at the expense of her core mystery. Still, as a diamond-sharp satirical whodunit in the vein of Liane Moriarty, this succeeds. Agent: Jon Wood, RCW Literary. (Nov.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"The Other Half." Publishers Weekly, vol. 270, no. 38, 18 Sept. 2023, pp. 40+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A767497293/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2bbaa94b. Accessed 23 Aug. 2024.
Vassell, Charlotte THE OTHER HALF Doubleday (Fiction None) $27.00 11, 21 ISBN: 9780593685945
Class lines morph into clash lines when British aristocrats and police face off in this dead-on debut.
On the night before an Instagram influencer is found dead, Rupert Beauchamp, heir to a baronetcy, holds a tawdry black-tie 30th birthday bash at a London McDonald's, where guests wash down fast food with champagne and coke. The dead woman turns out to be Rupert's girlfriend, Clemmie O'Hara, whose body is discovered on Hampstead Heath by DI Caius Beauchamp (no relation to Rupert, but it's an intriguing coincidence that eventually explains a lot about Caius). Clemmie's death is convenient for the nasty Rupert because he's always loved Nell Waddingham, whom he can't marry because she's not posh enough. Nell works in publishing and adores classic novels, especially Jane Austen's, which she loves to read and post about. She's Vassell's most perfectly wrought character and, along with Caius, one of the few likable ones. On a recent trip to Greece with Rupert and Clemmie, she experienced a terrible act of violence (only hinted at later in the book) that she can't seem to understand or process. Caius is clear-eyed about what happened to her and wants justice for her and Clemmie. He's not afraid to set his sights on Rupert, even though his elite-enamored boss tells him to back off. Rupert, like all the other aimless upper-class millennials in this novel, can buy his way out of pretty much any criminal behavior, but will he get away with murder? There are plenty of other people in Clemmie's circle with strong motives, and Vassell serves them up with gimlet-eyed precision. This is a sturdy police procedural whose plot is sometimes knocked off kilter by Vassell's frequent sendups of her morally bankrupt characters, but the forthright Caius is a beacon of justice who makes this debut shine.
Race and privilege light the fuse in this classics-laced whodunit.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Vassell, Charlotte: THE OTHER HALF." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Nov. 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A770738738/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=76e877ba. Accessed 23 Aug. 2024.
Vassell, Charlotte THE IN CROWD Doubleday (Fiction None) $28.00 8, 6 ISBN: 9780593685976
DI Caius Beauchamp of London's Metropolitan Police tackles two cold cases in Vassell's second novel--which, like The Other Half (2023), blends crime solving with a skewering of Britain's class system.
In this smart, provocative novel, we're again privy to Beauchamp's detecting skills as well as his personal life as a biracial Londoner who can't seem to avoid the snobby, sometimes racist, members of Britain's aristocracy. Thirty years ago, a multimillion-pound pension fund was stolen and the culprits were never found. Now, a woman tied to the case is found drowned in the Thames, and the case is reopened. Meanwhile, Caius is reexamining the disappearance of a teenager from a boarding school 15 years before. There are no clues to work with, but the abuse the students endured there is coming to light. Vassell perfectly constructs a classic crime procedural against a backdrop of racism, sexism, and classism. Beauchamp is a winning character readers will adore. Equally charming is Callie Foster, a bespoke milliner for whom Beauchamp is falling hard. She's sweet and naïve, in stark contrast to the variety of bitter and selfish characters. In a nod to The Other Half, Vassell brings back the sexual predator whom Beauchamp pursued in that novel, a man who, because of his upper-crust connections, was able to avoid consequences. Now he's pursuing Callie, and this plot thread adds a satisfying bit of suspense. Readers don't need to have read The Other Half to enjoy this intriguing novel, but reading both is as satisfying as pairing a cup of Earl Grey and a lavender biscuit. In the final pages, Vassell lays the groundwork for a third installment that promises to be as enjoyable as the ones that preceded it.
A stellar sophomore outing for an intriguing detective.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Vassell, Charlotte: THE IN CROWD." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A799332843/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f4ef425b. Accessed 23 Aug. 2024.
The In Crowd
Charlotte Vassell. Doubleday, $28 (432p) ISBN 978-0-593-68597-6
Detective Caius Beauchamp returns in Vassell's inventive second mystery chronicling the bad behavior of England's upper crust (after The Other Half). When a rowing team discovers a dead body floating in the Thames, it looks more like a tragic suicide than a crime. But Caius's investigation soon links the body to two seemingly unconnected cold cases: the decades-old disappearance of a teenage girl from a Cornish boarding school and the vanishing of an apparel executive who ran off with his company's pension fund and was never seen again. Caius launches inquiries into all three cases, which are complicated by the interference of a high-ranking politician with murky motives, as well as the detective's tentative romance with Callie Foster, an upscale milliner, who may be a witness to at least one of the crimes. Caius's quirky investigative partners, Matt Chung and Amy Noakes, also return, and the interplay among the three is even richer than in the previous entry. Vassell has wicked fun shifting narrators and timelines, and her satire remains sharp, but she stumbles while tying up the mystery's loose ends. Still, fans of the first book will enjoy themselves. Agent: Jon Wood, RCW Literary. (Aug.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"The In Crowd." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 25, 24 June 2024, p. 42. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A800404831/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=92b58c87. Accessed 23 Aug. 2024.
Review: Charlotte Vassell’s The Other Half
Written By Hannah Kiernan
The Other Half by Charlotte Vassell. Faber & Faber Ltd, 2023. €11.47, 351 pages.
The Other Half by Charlotte Vassell is a gripping tale that follows a group of upper middle-class Londoners who find themselves as suspects in a recent murder – with a myriad of entangled alibis. Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp spearheads the hunt for the red-handed, alongside his team, Detective Sergeant Cheung (Matt) and Detective Constable Noakes (Amy). As they investigate the case of the murdered blue-blooded influencer, they uncover the greater secrets held within the group of aristocrats and find themselves caught in a web of socialites and illegal schemes and activity. This whodunnit novel is mischievous, sharp, and ultimately captivating.
Opening with the jarring statement “A girl is dying”, this novel is immediately attention-grabbing. The chapters alternate between two perspectives – that of DI Beauchamp, and that of Helena (Nell) Waddingham, a young woman with whom every male character of significance has some sort of infatuation with. To Rupert Achilles de Courcy Beauchamp (pronounced ‘Beecham’, unlike DI Beauchamp), Nell is the perfect woman, if not for her ‘bad breeding’. Nell recites poetry, is well versed in Ancient Classics, and brings an ambitious book to every party she attends. Alex, who befriended both Nell and Rupert while studying at Oxford, shares this opinion with Rupert (without the aspect of classism, however) and is absolutely besotted with Nell. Even our lead Detective Inspector falls for her beauty and poise. Helena Waddingham is second to none in high-class London society, without even having to try of course.
Despite his penchant for Nell, Rupert maintains his long-term relationship with Clemency O’Hara, persistently promising to put an end to the relationship as he wines and dines Nell every Wednesday, until one day Clemency’s corpse is found on Hampstead Heath by DI Beauchamp.
Through both perspectives we become acquainted with the many interestingly named patricians with whom Rupert, Clemency, Nell, and Alex socialise, and bear witness to their hideously entitled ways of living, from being served by butlers in McDonalds to booking out a restaurant entirely for two people. Vassel is brilliant in her ability to create these silk-stocking characters that are immensely insufferable yet addictively interesting. Reading this novel is much like watching the Kardashians: you don’t necessarily like the characters, yet you cannot help but want to know more about how they live their lives. This book is akin to Magnolia Parks if it were written by Agatha Christie, and if the fashion references were replaced by somebody quoting Ovid or Plato and drinking green tea.
Charlotte Vassell also prevails in creating likeable characters, however. DI Caius Beauchamp is a just and stoic detective with a witty sense of humour and a relatable desire for self-improvement, and though this sometimes gives him an air of ostentatiousness, he means no harm really. His right-hand man, DS Matthew Cheung, is charming and refreshingly unpretentious, unfailing in his duty to bring the DI back to earth when he makes one too many Ovid references. DC Amy Noakes provides a much-needed counter-perspective to Caius and Matt’s team, calling them out on their subtle misogyny toward Clemency and her chosen career. Noakes is clever, sharp, and straight-forward, and I only wish to have seen a bit more of her in this novel.
As the detectives delve into this case and, simultaneously, into the lives of ‘the other half’, they return mind blown by how much money these people are willing to give away for trivial things such as a fancy gym membership (and even more for a locker within said gym), while also returning with an affinity for lavender shortbread biscuits. Their reactions are relatable and humorous, and it feels as though you are laughing alongside them at the expense of the rich; nothing creates a bond as well as a common enemy.
This trio is vital to the story and a huge aspect of why I enjoyed this book as much as I did.
The novel as a whole is easy to follow and understand. Vassell’s writing is engaging and full of wit, and her use of satire and suspense lends this to be a great Sunday afternoon read.
I found myself wanting to underline and jot down many quotes from this novel, one of my favourites being, “Cut flowers are inherently tragic. A life so vibrant and so vital decapitated in its prime to look pretty on your sideboard.”.
Furthermore, Vassell’s ability to write about the classism, racism, and misogyny that runs rampant throughout aristocratic London life with such flair adds a necessary depth to this novel. There are some question marks and loose ends at the end of the novel, which I imagine is intentionally done in order to outline a premise for a sequel. Despite this, I was not left feeling disappointed or unsatisfied, though I would not have complained about another chapter or two either.
If you are looking for a fun and engaging read that cleverly depicts and satirizes high society life and keeps you on your toes, this is the book for you. The Other Half is one of those books that you will pick up, start reading, and without even noticing, you will have spent your entire afternoon with it. It will make you laugh, it will make you wonder “is this really how rich people behave?” and, admittedly, it will make you want to drink herbal tea, start running, and read Metamorphoses.