Title: #YouDunnitAuthor(s): Nicci French, Tim Weaver & Alastair Gunn
Originally Published: October 2013
Page Count: 107 pages
Genre: Crime / Thriller
#YouDunnit is an interesting experiment with crime fiction. Penguin teamed up with Specsavers and twitter followers to come up with an interesting idea. They asked three crime writers to write their own short story based on plot devices thought up by twitter. Whilst the concept was basic and fairly ludicrous, the authors seemingly made it work.
There are three different short stories, but each revolves around followers of a particular twitter account getting murdered.
Nicci French's 'The Following' was probably the most simplistic of the three. Not to say this discredits her short story but out of the three of the writers, she has clearly taken the more obvious route. The motive for the murders were quite transparent for avid readers of crime fiction, and there were far too many names to remember for what was the shortest out of the three. Still, it was fairly clever and her pacing was spot on. 3/5
Tim Weaver's 'Disconnection' was easily the most impressive. It took a fairly different setting, South Africa, and incorporated a suspenseful and fantastic short story. The characters were believable, a background of relationships and feelings were established before jumping way too much into the story. The murder was clever, though at times I think he bent the rules on the criteria that twitter had created for him. Lucinda was definitely not the hero in the story, and the appearance of Weaver's already established David Raker was an odd inclusion. Maybe it ties in with one of his other novels and he included him as a cheap way to rouse interest? I don't know. However, repeating myself, this was the best of the three. The ending was a bit of a let down, but overall, if this was a novel, I'd be the first to buy it. 4/5
Alastair Gunn's 'Hashtag, Bodybag' was probably the weakest of the three, I just had no interest in the story, in which, he revolved around professional cycling. I just can't say that it was interesting. The antagonist came across as a 'Scooby Doo' villain once discovered and it was all a bit contrived. But maybe I'm just not a fan of his style of crime fiction. 2/5
Overall, a gem for a free kindle book from amazon. If you enjoy crime fiction and either want to read something a little bit different or get a sense of these authors, this may be a good idea for you. With its unique (yet unbelievable) plot, it does show off the skills of each writer as they try to work plausibility into a plot that had little. This has definitely made me excited to read more Tim Weaver.
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