Originally posted May 15, 2024. People hunger for epiphany, you think, they clamor for it, but given a chance, who among us would actually recognize it? Happening across West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman at the library, I was intrigued by its promise of a metafictional murder mystery (“the only missing piece of the puzzle is you, dear reader”) that combined elements of noir and fair-play detection, and in which “everyone is a suspect, including the erratic detective”. Given that description, I wasn’t expecting a conventional solution, but unfortunately I still came away disappointed—as much as it was the initial draw, I almost wished that this hadn’t been metafiction at all. West Heart Kill is aggressively fourth-wall-breaking, but I’ll start with the in-universe plot: It’s 1976, and private investigator Adam McAnnis has joined his university friend James Blake for a Fourth of July party at an exclusive hunting club owned by the Blakes and five other wealthy f...