Book Review - The Fury

Like I said in my previous post this week (The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen), I bought this after a job interview as a treat to self. I thought I did really well in the interview (I get really nervous in interviews) and went into Foyles and got a signed copy. Now, I wouldn’t have picked this up if it wasn’t for an interview did on a podcast I listen to call All About Agatha, and I was so intrigued by one or two of the details, I knew I would have to buy it. 

I, sadly, didn’t the job, in case you were wondering. 

Title and Author: The Fury by Alex Michaelides

Publisher: Michael Joseph

Bought, Borrowed or Gifted: Bought

Buy From (Affiliate): uk.bookshop.org

Seven guests go to a private Greek island. One of them being the former movie star, Lana Ferrar. Here, she hopes that she and her guests can unwind and enjoy themselves. 

But when the island gets suddenly cut off by violent winds, something awful happens. One of them is murdered and one of them is the killer… 

We’ve all read this before: a locked room mystery where our characters are trapped on an island with a killer and no way to escape, the most famous being And Then There Were None and Evil Under The Sun, both by Agatha Christie. And it’s Evil Under the Sun I kept coming back to in my head while I was reading this. Evil Under The Sun being told by an unreliable narrator (no spoiler, the narrator tell us of this within the first chapter). 

But Andrew, I hear you cry, you’ve never read Evil Under the Sun. Oh, I know and I have requested the audiobook of this (read by David Suchet) from my local library and will be listening to it as soon as I can. 

So yes, Evil Under the Sun with an unreliable narrator and told in a casual non-linear style. And by that, I mean it’s as if our narrator is talking to you over a drink and he’s telling you the story, only to hold details back till the right moment, backtracking at certain points, adding details, imagining situations going one way only to go “That’s how it should have happen. It actually went like this” and going on tandems. In other words, it takes its time and doesn’t get to the point. It’s almost as if the reader is humouring the narrator with his flights of fancy, even though we’re told we should know who the killer is because it was reported so widely in the media. 

Our narrator, Elliot, was one of the seven on the island and, like I said, he is unreliable (a bit like the narrator in Endless Night, another Agatha Christie novel). But what makes his narrating so interesting is, yes, it is a whodunnit but it’s also a whydunnit and as the story progresses, we begin to see hints of something much darker and twisted with all the characters…

I am going to admit I did suspect the ending, but it was a good way through the book, but even though, I didn’t see the conclusion till it was far too late. 

The narration isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but I had a blast reading this and I am researching Alex Michaelides previous books, The Silent Patient and The Maidens, and seeing if I can try and read one of them in the future (I have a sneaky feeling that there are tiny Easter eggs linking to both these books that will give Michaelides fans a kick)…