The Decoy by Florrie Palmer

Tucked in an idyllic village in the English countryside is a group of The Armstrong’s tightknit friends. When two members of the group die in suspicious accidents, another member of the group starts their own investigation. Are the deaths accidents or something more sinister?

In the rural English village of Heronsford, Eliza and David Armstrong live in the farmhouse Eliza grew up in. Her now elderly mother lives in a small converted barn close by.

Surrounded by friends, the Armstrong’s appear to have an idyllic life. But when two members of their social group die in suspicious circumstances, a cloud falls over the village.

Are the deaths linked? And were they really accidents?

Publisher: Audible | Narrator: Lucy Tregear, Louise Jameson | Length: 6 hrs 11 mins | Genre: Contemporary Thriller  | Source: Publisher | Rating: 3 Cups 

I’m not going to reveal a lot about the plot in this book as it will ruin the book for future readers.

This is my first experience reading Florrie Palmer and I found her writing style to be a mix of chic lit, mainstream fiction, and mystery. I’m going to be upfront and say skip the audiobook; I’ll explain why in a bit but, trust me, print or e-book is way to go with this one.

The book starts slow, exceedingly slow, as the characters, their backstories, and their current situations are slowly introduced. I don’t mind backstories, but I don’t need three chapters of them. It would have been nice if they had been mixed in with the story rather than just a bunch of rambling at the start. Several times I almost DNF’d this because the start was so slow and I had to force myself to pay attention to what was going on as none of the backstory reveals were major things.     

Another thing with this book is that it happens over a series of months and you’re quite a bit in before anything happens that’s an attention grabber. Once things finally kicked off, I did enjoy watching how things played out although the attempt at using red herrings fell a bit flat as the clues never really connected.

The book is slow and, sadly, the narrators didn’t help the feeling of slowness this book had. They weren’t bad but they were really mellow and easy to tune out. I had to really force myself to pay attention and I found myself rewinding often, as I wasn’t paying a bit of attention to what was going on. The narrators just weren’t my cup of tea. I ended up borrowing a copy from Kindle Unlimited and found it was able to hold my attention better than the audio version.

Overall, this isn’t going to be one of my favorites—even when I became invested in what was going on, it was easy for me to become distracted by other things going on around me.  I would put the book down for weeks without giving it a thought and only pick it back up when a review reminder popped up on my calendar.

This is more of a fiction novel that’s built around the mundane lives of the Armstrong family and their friends. If it had been billed as a fiction novel with a side of mystery, I would have been more prepared for the pacing of it. If you’re not interested in reading about everyday struggles (money problems, work issues, marital issues, family issues) then you’re not going to be able to get into this book.

I gave it a 3-Cup rating because I did like the way the mystery was solved.  

Have you read any good mysteries lately?