What To Do When Someone Dies by Nicci French

Written by Nicci French, What To Do When Someone Dies is a very light mystery, more of a whats-going-on than a who-done-it.

Ellie Faulkner is told at her front door by two policewomen that her husband Greg has died in a fiery car crash. Shocking enough, but then she finds out there was another woman in the car named Milena. Who was she?

We follow Ellie as her friends comfort her, she plans the funeral, and goes through Greg's belongings for the first 100 pages, waiting for something to happen. The kind of light novel where it's not just a dinner, but the dishes are described in detail. Ellie continues to puzzle about Milena as friends calm her by accepting Greg was having an affair, but she doesn't agree.

She finds out Milena was a London party planner and after visiting her house, goes to her workplace to investigate, where she is mistaken as an old friend. Giving a fake name, she is quickly offered a job clearing up Milena's things and starts to dig into her computer on the side. Soon she finds Milena had several extramarital affairs, as did her business partner, as did the partner's husband, and soon she is sleeping with a caterer herself. Pretty quick for someone who's husband died a few days ago.

All the detective work has brought up skeletons and connections the police hadn't known about, which Ellie presents as a case of murder. Do they think she is crazy? or the killer herself?

This was only a page turner in the sense that I had to turn the pages of the book to continue, and although the majority of the cover quotes said it was 'gripping' it was only in the sense that I had to grip the sides of the book to read it. Pretty smooth sailing - there were some questions about who was doing what, but although there was a murder halfway, no real surprises or twists - even a finale which had so little foreshadow there was no way to guess the villain's motive, it's just told to the reader in a page or two. I was excited at one point to think Milena was still alive, and at one point that Ellie killed herself, but that was just me wanting to spice up the story.

Why did I read it? I saw that Nicci French is actually a husband and wife team, Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, which I thought was an interesting idea. I always like to try out new authors, you never know who is going to be your next favourite.

2008 / Tradeback / 344 pages