Thanks, The Fearless Storyteller, for reaching out with a copy of Murder at Midnight by John Ukah. I was given a copy of the book and give this review voluntarily.
Alex Simpson, a former police officer now turned private investigator, is having a relaxing stay at a resort he’s been to before, along with an interesting cast of guests. Alex has come to relax, but he’s constantly observing their behavior. When a female guest is found stabbed in her room, it gives Alex a sense of deja vu as the last time he stayed at the resort, another guest had hung herself. It also places him in an unfavorable light with the police! As Alex thinks that the investigation isn’t as thorough as it should be, he sets his mind to tracking down the killer.
I found Ukah’s writing style to be amusing; right when I thought that he’d repeated a word too often, he explained that a character really liked using it. I thought the sentences were a little choppy – they weren’t very complex – but this could be taken as a reflection of Alex’s thought process as a first-person narrator. Simpson was an easy character to follow, but some of the things he noticed weren’t totally natural, I thought.
This was a short novel and the plot moved along well. There were a lot of red herrings, but I did guess the culprit pretty early on. It was pretty easy to see where the novel was headed; it did definitely feel like a debut novel. If Alex hadn’t been present when the first girl died, I think it would have been more of an intricate plot.
Murder at Midnight did read like a debut novel, as I’ve stated above. I think Ukah just needs more polishing as an author, which will come in time. He definitely did his utmost to throw readers off the scent and I think if the culprit had been anyone else, it would have worked more smoothly. I found the way that some of the characters approached Alex unnatural, just showing up at his door and spilling their stories to him. The evidence that put the killer away was also just too conveniently acquired. It didn’t flow as well as it could have.
All in all, I’d give Murder at Midnight three out of five stars. It wasn’t the most engaging novel, I thought the plot was wrapped up much too cleanly, and it could be a little awkward at times – but I found the mystery to be good and the red herrings and redirection to be confusing. Ukah definitely has potential as an author and I would be interested in reading his next work.