This book is very clever, in some ways perhaps a bit too much so. It's also very meta, a tribute to the mystery genre as a whole and certain writers, such as Agatha Christie, specifically, which I'll admit straight up that I definitely don't have the background to appreciate in full. Personally I found the real-world/publisher storyline more interesting - though to be fair I've never been much of a whodunnit fan; if I'm being completely honest I might even appreciate Sherlock Holmes primarily for being the source material of beloved modern adaptations rather than on its own merits - but I felt a little distanced from that one as well, possibly residual from trying to reconcile it with the Atticus Pund plot, with the end result being that I never really felt connected to either storyline. Kudos for casual LGBT rep, though in this day and age it's becoming more of an expectation than a significant bonus.

So taken as a whole, the duality works on paper - and again, is very clever and meta and all that - but makes me as a reader feel a little distanced from the story. I like being able to feel immersed in characters and plot and setting without worrying about minutiae, but mysteries like this one seem to be more about the construction as a whole with the devil in the details, with my personal favorite elements being just tools to demonstrate the author's/detective's storytelling ability.