Sir Lawrence Linwood’s unlamented death summons his three adopted children from Peru, France, and London for a funeral and a will reading. There were already hints at the beginning of Christopher Huang’s intriguing novel, Unnatural Ends, that there is something sinister about the Linwoods but these hints turn into red flags when Sir Lawrence leaves instructions in his will that his entire estate will go to whichever one of them solves his murder. That stunner is just the first of many bombshells.
After the local police detective reluctantly gives his accent to the three Linwoods—eldest Alan, an archaeologist; Roger, an engineer and pilot; and youngest Caroline, a journalist—to poke around and ask questions. All three pursue different angles, narrated in alternating chapters by each sibling, and cover an astonishing amount of ground. More interesting to me, however, than the question of who bashed in Sir Lawrence’s brains with a medieval mace, were the mysteries the siblings uncover as they uncover the remarkable number of people who might have wished the old man dead.
Unlike other novels that set the protagonists in competition with each other, I couldn’t pick a favorite to root for. All of them are decent people. All of them have worthwhile goals for their lives. All of them grew on me over the course of the novel, especially once I learned more about how strictly their father had raised them. Alan is a quiet man who only wants to return to his excavation at Machu Picchu. He doesn’t want to follow in his adopted father’s petty tyrant footsteps. Roger, who struggles with anger over the injustices he sees, would only step into his father’s shoes so that he could become a titan of industry. Caroline is a dark horse who rarely explains what she’s up to. Instead, she efficiently finds her own way around whatever obstacles might block her path. The other thing that kept me from picking favorites was the fact that, even though the siblings pursue their own inquiries, they’re all more concerned with figuring out what’s going on than they are about inheriting the estate.
Unnatural Ends was an engrossing read. I’ve never come across a mystery like it and, even better, Huang pulls off the inventiveness of the premise with outstanding pacing and wild-but-satisfying twists that send the protagonists all over the countryside to chase clues and potential suspects. I also very much appreciated the psychological complexity of the characters, even the secondary ones, in this novel. This is an amazing historical mystery that I strongly recommend to anyone who wants to be surprised.