Review: 'The Dinner Guest' by B.P. Walter

Domestic thrillers have steadily become a key ingredient in my reading diet. As COVID-19 struck I found myself wavering on them since we were all stuck inside now. But I have slowly opened up to them again and I'm glad to say that they still hit the spot. Thanks to One More Chapter and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

Pub. Date: 01/04/2021
Publisher: One More Chapter; HarperCollins

Four people walked into the dining room that night. One would never leave.

Matthew: the perfect husband.

Titus: the perfect son.

Charlie: the perfect illusion.

Rachel: the perfect stranger.

Charlie didn’t want her at the book club. Matthew wouldn’t listen.

And that’s how Charlie finds himself slumped beside his husband’s body, their son sitting silently at the dinner table, while Rachel calls 999, the bloody knife still gripped in her hand.

Classic crime meets Donna Tartt in this nerve-shredding domestic noir thriller that weaves a sprawling web of secrets around an opulent West London world and the dinner that ends in death.

 Aaah perfect families, this beautiful trope of domestic thrillers. They are wealthy (or at least well-off), beautiful, well-connected, deeply content with each other and successful. But once you get a peek behind their front door you realize it is all a fiction and everything is hanging by a thread. I adore this set-up because it confirms what I've always suspected: no one has their sh*t together and everyone lies at least a little bit. We have all been stuck inside a lot more this past year so we understand the tensions that can arise that means a small omission can turn into a massive betrayal. So if the tension at home is already high, what happens when someone else enters into that dynamic? What do you do when someone is suddenly there, seemingly always there, and you're the only one who doesn't trust them?

In The Dinner Guest we start at the end. Matthew is dead, Rachel is calling the police, bloody knife in her hand, and Charlie is just sitting there, confused. From there we keep around this moment, witnessing the year-long build-up to this moment and the days immediately following the murder. There is a lot of guessing done by the reader for about 70% of the book, at which point B.P. Walter begins to reveal the pieces leading up to the grand reveal. I adore the guessing part and I did feel like Walter made sure to drop hints here or there which then became clear later on in the book. Sometimes it does feel like we're being teased with secrets, where the reader knows there is something they don't know and that thing explains everything. Sometimes this is fun, sometimes this is frustrating, and The Dinner Guest moves back and forth on that. However, I didn't find myself connecting to the characters as much as I would have liked. Although they were all technically interesting they did feel like pastiches at times and I couldn't really buy any of them as fully-fledged adults. 

Although I have seen B.P. Walter's books around, this is my first go at one of his. I have to admit that I was caught up in The Dinner Guest pretty quickly. For me it is always the mystery that gets me first, it is what I will keep reading for, but it is everything around the mystery that will let a book sink in with me. I found the central mystery at the heart of The Dinner Guest fascinating. Who murdered Matthew and why? Why is it so hard to decide when there are max three suspects? My one criticism of The Dinner Guest is that while Walter makes an attempt at societal critique it falls flat almost completely. The characters snipe at each other to be less conservative and more open-minded, less snobbish and more charitable, but this never goes further than the surface. Like many other books, there is a fascination with the rich and landed, with their beautiful houses and storied history. While the blurb seems to link this to Donna Tartt I wouldn't go that far. Tartt makes it very clear that while there is a glamour this glamour is based on intimidation and fear to a large extent. Here we mostly have the facade, which is a shame.

I give this novel...

3 Universes!

The Dinner Guest had me hooked with its premise almost immediately. While I found it difficult to connect with and care for the characters, the back and forth between past and present had me guessing throughout, so I was solidly hooked.