Book Review: The 22 Murders of Madison May

 

The 22 Murders of Madison May

Max Barry

Overall: 3/5

Plots and Themes: 3/5

Characters: 3/5

Writing Style: 4/5

Attention Grabbing: 4/5

Felicity is a political journalist, so it's a little annoying to be placed on a crime piece. She's quickly drawn into the life of Madison May, a young real estate agent who was murdered in broad daylight. Her investigation quickly leads to Clayton and Hugo, two characters in a game she doesn't quite understand. In her pursuit, she finds herself teleported to another dimension where everything is the same but also different. The clock is in a different place, her boyfriend cooks, and Maddy May is very much alive. She quickly finds herself entangled in one man's multi-dimensional quest of obsessive tendencies, where he murders the versions he doesn't like. 

I think that the premise of this book is stellar. It confused me a lot because anything that tries to bring in parallel dimensions takes a bit to click with me. But I think that the author avoided the jargon that would confuse readers like me and focused more specifically on the motivations of a man deluded into justifying his murders. I liked the idea of commonalities along with the differences, the reality of millions of worlds where we all live just in slightly altered states and where we're all succeeding or failing in different ways. 

My biggest issue with it was probably the second half. Felicity was an inspiring character in her dedication to help a woman who she had never met even while knowing there are a billion of the same girl within her reach. I like the idea of suffering being a number that you can increase or decrease over the idea that nothing you do in your own dimension matters because there's always another within reach. But what really started getting me was when Felicity dropped off the wagon and then attacked the dimensional travelers for doing the same thing. She felt like she made up her mind on who was morally right or wrong and she set herself on that opinion. I didn't like it much and it didn't feel like the character we got to know in the first section. I don't think the time gaps and jumps and switches in POV helped much with that either.

All in all though, I think it was a great premise. It faltered a bit on the final application, but it didn't completely flounder. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would despite the fact that it completely messed up my mind.