Kill Your Darlings – Josh Lanyon

At this mystery conference, murder is more than just another plot twist…

Nobody likes conferences, but they’re part of the job.

Millbrook House senior editor Keiran Chandler has spent years curating the best voices in crime lit, but when an unsolicited manuscript is handed to him at the Noir at the Shore mystery conference, truth collides with fiction. I Know What You Did is more than just another slush pile submission—it’s a direct threat.

U.N. Owen seems to know what really happened in Steeple Hill all those years ago. Who is Owen? How does he know these things? Clearly the mysterious author is after more than a book deal. But what?

With a potentially career-ending publishing merger on the horizon, the end of his affair with bestselling author and former homicide detective Finn Scott, and not so subtle threats from someone in his past, Keiran has a lot bigger problems than coming up with something witty to say on discussion panels.

I’d always heard the phrase “Kill your darlings” and took it literally so I had to google what it actually means. As Masterclass.com explains, it’s the writer’s ruthless art of cutting beloved but unnecessary storylines, characters, or sentences for the sake of the bigger picture.

In Josh Lanyon’s Kill Your Darlings, I’m still figuring out what those “darlings” are. The novel is a meta-heavy murder mystery featuring Keiran Chandler, a senior editor at a publishing house about to be acquired. At a mystery conference, tensions flare between editors from his current and future employers. True to Josh Lanyon’s style, the book is filled with cameos from other series, commentary on crime fiction, publishing politics, and of course—murders.

I loved the rare glimpse into traditional publishing. It’s unsurprisingly cutthroat, but seeing it through an editor’s eyes rather than a writer’s felt fresh. Keiran, respected and experienced, faces conflicting feelings about his career as rival editors circle, writers are poached, and the merger looms. At 40, he wonders if it’s too late to start over.

The conference scenes were fun, with panels featuring mystery writers who solve real-life cases. Familiar faces like Christopher Holmes (Holmes & Moriarty) , Adrien English (The Adrien English Mysteries), and Kit’s husband, JX Moriarty appear, alongside side characters offering high-falutin opinions on crime fiction that went over my head.

The real twist is Keiran’s past, and a long-ago crime Keiran was an accessory to. It came biting him in the ass in the form of blackmail through a manuscript detailing a fictionalized account of a murder Keiran was involved at just 17. This had him visiting his hometown, resurrecting old ghosts, and unearthing secrets, blurring the line between fiction and reality

I’ve always wished mysteries featured other crimes apart from murder or missing persons. So even though murder is involved, I enjoyed how the plot focused more on finding the blackmailer and how everything relates to Keiran’s tragic past. The details of the crime are already known, including the murderer, who disappeared.

As with the way of stories, everything came full circle, but I wasn’t impressed when the resolution was to literally throw things in the trash. But this is also romance, and we wouldn’t have our HEA otherwise.

The romance is classic Josh Lanyon: a second-chance romance with past hookups, mutual pinings, a bisexual single dad, and an emotionally closed-off love interest. To shake things up, Keiran, the narrator, is the emotionally distant one while Finn Scott, writer and ex-cop, wears his heart on his sleeve. While not ground-breaking, they were a worthy addition to the author’s roster.

There are books about books, but Kill Your Darlings is a book about the publishing books. Perhaps an homage and a critique, it captures the joys and woes of the people who work behind the scenes. That there was a real-life mystery in their midst is just another reminder that fiction and reality often blur in the publishing world. Overall, an insightful, and intriguing story that cuts deep in fiction and in truth.

Rating:
4 Stars – minor quibbles but I loved it to bits

Soundtrack: Kill Your Darlings
Artist: Mesh
Album: Kill Your Darlings

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