“If you want to find me, search within these pages.”
Bestselling author Richard Debden is missing. The only clue to his disappearance: a copy of his unpublished final novel delivered to his ex-girlfriend, Amy. When Richard’s closest reunite for his memorial, Amy enlists the support of Chris, his former best friend. Together, they wonder if he might still be alive and in need of their help.
Richard’s manuscript tells of two abandoned children in wartime Britain, instructed by a shadowy Postmaster to deliver letters to ghosts, releasing them from their torment. As Chris and Amy delve into the text, they recognise parallels between fiction and reality; clues to a trail that leads across the country and – dare they hope? – to Richard.
But they are not the only interested party. A mysterious society is following them, their motives unclear. Can Chris and Amy unlock the secrets of Dead Letters, or will more sinister forces get there first?
Dead Letters is the intriguing second novel by P.J. Murphy, author of Troubleshot.
“If you want to find me, search within these pages.”
Bestselling author Richard Debden is missing. The only clue to his disappearance: a copy of his unpublished final novel delivered to his ex-girlfriend, Amy. When Richard’s closest reunite for his memorial, Amy enlists the support of Chris, his former best friend. Together, they wonder if he might still be alive and in need of their help.
Richard’s manuscript tells of two abandoned children in wartime Britain, instructed by a shadowy Postmaster to deliver letters to ghosts, releasing them from their torment. As Chris and Amy delve into the text, they recognise parallels between fiction and reality; clues to a trail that leads across the country and – dare they hope? – to Richard.
But they are not the only interested party. A mysterious society is following them, their motives unclear. Can Chris and Amy unlock the secrets of Dead Letters, or will more sinister forces get there first?
Dead Letters is the intriguing second novel by P.J. Murphy, author of Troubleshot.
Most people assumed that Richard’s disappearance was a publicity stunt, but I knew better. He would have never lowered himself to that. No, something terrible must have happened.
Besides, his publisher didn’t seize the opportunity to release another novel while the talk was all conspiracy and kidnap. Pretty soon, the critics sensed that enough time had passed that it was now appropriate to reappraise his work and, well, criticise. The window for new material passed quickly. Before long, nobody was talking about Richard Debden – and if ever they did, it was to point out that he had a history of instability. It’s disquieting how easy it is to write off a life without any real explanation.
After a few months, the police drew a line under the matter, finding no evidence of foul play. They deemed it unlikely that this was an insurance scam, since he had no life insurance. There weren’t any terrorists, human traffickers or drug cartels in the picture either. They did note that Richard had emptied his bank accounts after vanishing, but apparently that isn’t unusual when someone doesn’t want to be tracked down.
‘Sometimes people just decide they want to disappear,’ they told his parents. ‘In most of these cases, all you can do is wait. They come back in their own time.’
Statistic-hungry, I looked it up. In ninety-nine per cent of cases, the missing person is found within a year. That’s probably why, three-hundred-and-sixty-six days later, his family held a small service to commemorate his passing. They did it partly to tempt him to reveal himself. The Richard I knew could never have resisted the drama of reappearing at his own funeral.
It was nice to be invited, but I felt a nagging disappointment throughout the ceremony. Main point: he didn’t turn up. Besides that, the whole thing lacked grandeur. Was this truly the send-off my friend deserved – thirty-or-so of us gathered in the chapel of a minor Cambridge college? Was that the sum total of the impact Richard had made on the world? It should have been a cathedral, all rich velvet and black, with standing room only and a tearful throng gushing into the court outside. Those were the funerals of Richard’s stories. Tragedy and unbearable loss. Rivers of tears. That was the send-off he deserved. Not this, this… mediocrity.
This wasn’t a funeral, though, was it? That was the root of the problem. No one knew how they were supposed to behave. Were we mourning? No, they had billed this as a celebration of Richard’s life. I, for one, wasn’t ready to accept that it was over.
I sought out Richard’s parents to offer my condolences. Mr. Debden had sunken eyes, and his pursed lips were hidden beneath an overgrown grey moustache. Mrs. Debden flapped a black handkerchief around as she spoke. Her face was pale, and she rarely made eye contact. But, overall, they seemed to be coping well. They had been trained for this moment by Richard’s various crises.
I left soon afterwards and skipped the ‘informal’ drinks proposed by some old university friends who had opted, callously, to seize the opportunity for a reunion. I couldn’t face the conversation, the theories about what might have happened to Richard, nor the image we’d settle on of him somehow riding off into the sunset when, deep down, most people believed he was dead. He was unstable, wasn’t he? He’d threatened to end his own life before. It had only been a matter of time.
I didn’t have any desire, either, to hear the rehashed tales of his youth: the drunken exploits, the bruised mornings. Everyone would be careful to overlook the fact that all those stories were from at least eight or nine years ago when we lived together in this city, before graduation scattered us back across the country. Those past few years, I had only communicated with Richard via the odd email, the shared link, or comment on a status update; the internet’s imitation of friendship. I knew that if I stayed it would become evident that I – like everyone else – had failed him.
I had booked a room in town, so I was stuck in Cambridge for the night. I decided to kill a few hours wandering around, visiting places that reminded me of Richard. I stopped by the green where he would share his love of poetry every Saturday morning, reading aloud to people hurrying from one shopping centre to another. Next, I visited the square where we queued to graduate, and he vomited into a drain to the delight of the enthralled tourists. I walked back along the river, passing boathouses where we offered ourselves as sacrifices to our college rowing team’s honour on the toughest, coldest mornings known to man. I hadn’t been there in ten years, but Richard’s writing, inspired by the architecture, had kept those places alive for me. In a funny way, I felt like I had still known him through his novels, over those past few years. He just hadn’t known me.
It was dark when I got back to the hotel. Saturday night revellers were roaming the streets, but it was too early for sleep. I had resolved to lock myself in my room and dip into the minibar until the world became hazy. It would be my personal tribute to Richard: the alcohol and prescription medication that had at times liberated and at others confined him, the oblivion to which, one way or another, he was now consigned.
Amy caught me waiting for the lift.
‘You didn’t think you’d get away without saying hello, did you?’
Her voice was richer than I remembered, but it retained its playful lilt. I turned and saw that she looked the same as before, just mellowed, with laughter lines around her lips and slight stains beneath her eyes.
My heart leapt, but my brain clamped down every muscle. I wasn’t ready to face her. Amy was Richard’s long-serving girlfriend and medium-serving ex. If Richard really was dead, she was the closest thing he had to a widow.
Except… except, she always found a way to surprise me.
‘Hello… wow!’ I blurted out.
‘Try something new, Chris. I’ve had that reaction all day.’
Amy had changed her look. Gone was the severe bowl haircut she sported throughout university. She had grown out her hair, and it suited her. More significantly, she was visibly pregnant. Usually, I would avoid jumping to this conclusion, aware of the social faux pas possible in this age of refined sugar, but this was beyond question. Her weight gain was almost exclusively centred on her belly, to which her hands moved instinctively as I gazed at it.
‘Congratulations?’ I ventured.
Amy rolled her eyes. ‘Epic fail!’ Still, she took my hand. ‘Come on, we’ve got some catching up to do.’
She led me to a table in the corner of the hotel bar, where she had been waiting, apparently, for “hours” (I remain unable to reconcile her timeline of events, but let’s not dwell on it further here). This place was all marble and felt-lined benches. We were alone, thanks to bar prices scandalous enough to drive away all but the most desperate of alcoholics.
Amy slid herself along the bench and let out a great sigh.
‘Everything’s so much effort these days!’ She stroked her fingers over her bump.
I rubbed my stomach, which had also grown noticeably larger since the last time we saw each other. ‘Tell me about it.’
When I returned with the drinks (a double gin and tonic for me, just the tonic for her), I asked her, ‘So, how many months?’
‘Twenty-eight weeks,’ Amy said. Then, noticing that her answer had started the cogs in my brain whirring, she added, ‘That’s seven months. Baby’s due mid-October.’
‘And the father?’
‘He was born in January.’
‘Come on! Who is he?’
‘His name’s Claude,’ she said grudgingly. ‘He’s a photographer. We met a few months after Richard and I finished, and, well, things just grew from there.’
‘Apparently.’
Amy laughed. ‘You haven’t changed, have you? It’s good to see you. How long has it been? A few Christmases now...’
‘Work’s been non-stop. I’ve had to pass up on so many get-togethers.’
The truth was I hadn’t seen her or Richard since they split up five years earlier. It was nothing personal; I hadn’t seen anybody else, either, not apart from family or work colleagues. My job had a lot to answer for.
‘You managed today, though.’
‘I had to.’ I took a sip, reflecting on this. ‘Richard always had a way of pulling us together.’
Amy smiled wanly. ‘Most of the time.’
The same qualities that made Richard great fun to be around made it impossible to stay. I remember one spring, the first vaguely warm day of the year, he organised a gathering for Amy’s birthday. This must have been a year or two after we graduated. He insisted on preparing the first barbecue of the year, boasting that he would be the only person in the country out in their garden with kitchen utensils in hand. I remember him enthusing over the phone about how he was going to put up a tent to shelter us from the wind. I humoured him, wary of getting too involved.
When I arrived, he was in the tent. From the back door of their flat, I listened to his sobs over the heavy rain. Amy stood there with me. Her eyes were weary. There would be no consoling him.
In the end, he and I drank ourselves into unconsciousness in the tent, pontificating to each other about life, death and the pointlessness of it all. Amy went to bed, gathering strength for the swing back the other way.
It wasn’t astonishing that they split up, but I couldn’t imagine how it had happened. Amy always had a way of coping, and Richard – even in his darkest hour – was a captivating person to be around. The colours were always that much brighter with him, and the contrast much starker. Every object had a black outline, as in a comic book. You experienced everything to its fullest extent. Everything.
‘I didn’t expect to see you here,’ I said.
‘Me neither,’ Amy replied, ‘but when it came to it…’ She paused, before changing track. ‘So, what do you make of Richard’s disappearance? Any theories?’
I took a long sip of my drink. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard more than enough theories today.’
‘You’d be surprised! We’ve talked about everything but. It was strange, like people were afraid to mention him. I don’t know if that’s because they think he’s alive or dead.’
‘And how is everyone?’
Amy took an inward breath. ‘The uni bunch? Same as ever, really. It’s funny how we fall into old habits when we’re together, like no time has passed at all. We joked around a lot. It was all fine. I left when Shelley got out her guitar and started singing a song she’d written for Richard. Something about a “Flame in the Breeze.” It sounded vaguely familiar.’
I nodded my head in sympathy.
‘Ben’s still in investment banking,’ Amy continued. ‘Somehow, he managed to get a promotion out of the banking crisis, so he’s getting even richer, shifting around non-existent money. Dave’s a florist now, though I suspect that might be an MI5 cover. He was never really that good with his hands.’
‘Thus speaks the voice of experience.’
Amy glared at me. “What happens in freshers’ week stays in freshers’ week.’
‘I never agreed to that,’ I said. ‘And you? What have you been up to?’
‘I’ve been around here, lecturing mainly, a couple of exhibitions.’
‘…and that’s how you met Claude?’
Amy nodded. ‘What about you, Mr. “Work’s Been Non-Stop”? What is it exactly you do that’s so important? The last I heard it was something to do with traffic.’
‘Still is,’ I said. ‘But you don’t want to hear about that.’
‘Come on! You’ve got to tell me something about yourself. Seeing anyone?’
I shifted uncomfortably. Despite the pretext of discussing careers, Amy was more interested in my romantic life. It was the same with my parents, who did little to hide their concern that I had chosen a life of celibacy, and that the prospects of grandchildren were next to zero.
‘I’m between girlfriends right now,’ I said.
Amy laughed. ‘You’ve been using that line since we were eighteen!’
‘It’s a good line!’
‘Whatever, Chris. You know, now’s the time. Believe it or not, you’re at your physical peak. If you don’t do something now, it’ll be too late. In a few years, everyone will have paired off, and you’ll be old and lonely and waiting for people to divorce so you can pick off the scraps.’
‘Thanks,’ I muttered. ‘That’s a lovely thought.’ It was, without a doubt, time to change the subject. ‘Anyway, you haven’t told me what you think happened to Richard. When did you see him last? How was he? Any hint he might disappear off the face of the planet?’
‘For that, we need another round.’ Amy held up her empty glass. ‘Same again. Actually, make it a double!’
I gestured to the barman, who seemed a little perplexed when I ordered a double tonic water, but he went ahead and poured it anyway. Amy waited until the drinks had been brought over before she said:
‘I haven’t spoken to Richard since Pursuit into Shadow.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I wondered if it might be that.’
Pursuit into Shadow was Richard’s most recent novel, published almost four years earlier. It was a departure from his previous work, which was consistently high fantasy featuring elves, dwarfs, orcs and trolls – rip-offs of Lord of the Rings, basically, but the crowds still lapped it up. Pursuit into Shadow was a fantasy piece, too, but it contained only a handful of characters. The monsters that usually inhabited his worlds were gone, replaced by an ever-present sense of menace. The story followed General Avadar, head of the Royal Guard, pursuing his missing ward, Princess Saria, who was abducted in the first chapter. Avadar tracked her captors, persevering long after everyone else had given up. He faced every challenge and endured every hardship, all the punishments that flesh and spirit can bear. By the end of the book, he was a mere shadow of his former self. And Saria’s spirit was corrupted a little each day by the dark force that held her and sought to make her its own, body and soul. Page by page, her innocence faded, her eyes darkened, and her body became a puppet to the desires of darkness. When the two finally came face to face, they no longer recognised each other.
Pursuit into Shadow was written the winter after Amy left Richard. He locked himself in his flat and wrote until he had expunged all the bitterness and all the despair. A break-up album in the form of a novel. Richard imagining Amy in the arms of another.
‘It terrified me,’ Amy said.
‘You read it?’
‘I didn’t have to. It was all over the media: the “true meaning of his words.” Even if I could have avoided that, I had well-meaning idiots phoning to see how I was getting on.’
‘That’s the thing about being involved with an author,’ I said. ‘Your dirty linen gets washed in public, no matter how cryptic they try to make their writing.’
Amy shook her head. ‘It wasn’t my dirty linen. It was his. He came across like some kind of maniac. Do you have any idea how frightening it is to be loved so obsessively?’
I smiled. I’ve no idea why. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘Other men I’ve been with, it’s never been like that when it’s ended. Maybe the odd phone call or drunken visit. I could cope with that. Not Richard. He never did any of that regular stuff. He just holed himself up and wrote things he would never have told me straight. It was like he couldn’t pursue me himself, so he sent one of his characters to do it.’
‘Writing was the only way he could express the things he felt. Setting it in a different world somehow liberated him. That’s why I was so worried when he told me he was stopping.’
Amy sat up. ‘He told you what?’
‘We were emailing, you see, right up until last year. Stupid stuff, mostly, but towards the end, he told me he’d had enough of writing. He said Pursuit would be his last novel; there was no way he could follow it. You were asking me about theories earlier. Well, here’s mine: the way I see it, only a limited number of things could have happened to Richard. He had no money troubles and enough prescription medication that I couldn’t see him getting involved in other drugs. There’s no way he’s been kidnapped – who would pay the ransom, and what human trafficking ring would have him? No, he’s either taken up the life of a hermit, or he’s done something stupid to himself. Writing was his coping mechanism. Ever since I got the news that he’d gone missing, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t stopped writing.’
Amy reflected on this for a few seconds. Then she smiled as though she had satisfied herself of something.
‘Can I tell you something, Chris? First, you have to promise me you’ll keep quiet about it.’
‘Of course.’
Who was I going to tell, exactly?
Amy moved in close and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘He didn’t stop writing. I have it upstairs in my room. Dead Letters. Richard Debden’s final novel.’
* * *
Richard Debden’s Disappearance: The Facts.
Thus is headed the first sheet of the reporter’s notebook I bought especially. I turn to it now, in one of many bouts of procrastination I’ll have before I finish writing this all down. I intended to use it as an investigative tool, rather than a writing aid, but it was a waste of time, even for that purpose. In total, I managed to fill only five pages with thoughts and clues before consigning it to the same drawer I keep all the other part-filled notebooks I’ve bought over the years.
I was lucky to gather as much information as I did, cobbling it together mainly from titbits his mother and Amy fed me. Richard managed to keep his private life very private. Still, there’s some helpful information in there:
Last seen: 5th July (Public Library). Richard lived alone; the last contact with his parents was their bi-annual phone call.
Bank activity: Several large cash withdrawals in April-June. Accounts emptied 27th July. Police unable to confirm identity of individual behind these transactions.
Disappearance reported by: Richard’s agent – calls unreturned for two weeks.
Holiday plans: None known.
Connection to shady characters: Unknown.
Potential leads: Dead Letters.
* * *
Amy closed the door to her hotel room and rattled the latch into place. She gestured towards the package on the bedside cabinet.
‘It came in the post the other day. With this.’
She handed me a piece of paper, folded in two. It was fine, heavy – the kind of paper they used for love letters in the days before email murdered romance. In fountain pen, the sentence, “If you want to find me, search within these pages.”
In the weeks that followed, those words would come to haunt me.
‘The address is in the same handwriting,’ Amy said. ‘It’s definitely Richard’s.’
‘That means he was still alive last week.’
‘Assuming he didn’t write it earlier and get someone else to post it.’
I sat on the bed to take a closer look at the package. It was still clothed in brown paper, torn open carefully. I sought out the postmark. Peterborough. Very little help there. I had temped one Christmas in a sorting office, so knew how they work. Peterborough was the main hub for a big chunk of East Anglia.
Inside, the pages were bound together with a length of string. The title page was blank, apart from the words, DEAD LETTERS by RICHARD DEBDEN. He was never all that good at titles.
‘You should tell the police about this,’ I said.
‘Probably,’ Amy said. ‘But I doubt that would get us very far. They interviewed me, you know? A complete box-ticking exercise. “Does Richard have any enemies?” Such a strange question. I can’t think of anyone I’d describe as my enemy; the notion seems positively medieval. And they spent most of the time repeating – over and over – that if someone wants to be lost, there’s little they can do to find them.’
‘Even so…’
‘No,’ Amy said firmly. ‘They wouldn’t check anything out. They’d just tell me that this package proves Richard is still around, playing tricks on us, wasting police time. You’re the only one that can help. That’s why I came today. That’s why I waited for you.’
‘Me?’
‘I haven’t been able to read a single page. I can’t, not after Pursuit. Imagine if it’s more of the same, just more deranged. But maybe you can play his game.’
‘“Search within these pages”?’ I said.
‘It’s pretty literal, I admit,’ Amy said, ‘but there’s not a huge amount of room for interpretation, either. This novel will lead us to Richard. If you can’t do it, no one can. Next to me, you know Richard better than anyone.’
I blinked. How could that be true? Not now, not after all this time. Back at university, maybe, when the three of us did everything together. It felt natural, you know, even though they were a couple. I never felt like I was intruding, just enjoying time with two friends I loved equally. In retrospect, I wonder whether they enjoyed my company as much or were just too polite to tell me to piss off and give them some privacy. Maybe I was a curiosity to them, a distraction, a substitute for having a pet. At the time, I didn’t care. Even after university, we were inseparable during those first few years after being released out into the world, with no parents or educational timetables to bind us. Those days had long since passed.
‘You want me to read it?’ I asked unenthusiastically.
Don’t get me wrong – I was desperate to get my hands on those pages – but everything about this seemed wrong. We couldn’t keep this secret, not if there was a chance Richard was still alive somewhere. The police, with better resources and techniques than us, could locate him in half the time we would need. Was I honestly ready to take on the responsibility of finding him? And what about his family? Surely, they had a right to know?
Despite all this, I noticed my fingers picking away at the knot in the string binding the pages. I had just about got it undone when Amy laid her hand on mine.
‘Not here,’ she said. ‘Take it away with you.’
I looked up at her, thinking at first that she was joking. Yes, Richard must have burned some serious bridges with Pursuit into Shadow, but could she honestly not bear to read a single word he had written?
‘I do want to know what’s in there if it helps us find him,’ she assured me. ‘But right now, I’m not sure I could make it past the first line.’
I retied the string in a bow and pulled the brown paper back over the pages. Only then did I realise that there had been a third presence with us in that hotel room. With his words covered, Richard was gone again, and Amy and I stood alone. I noticed for the first time how fatigued she appeared.
We looked at each other for a few seconds. Neither of us knew entirely what to do. Then Amy started to rub her hands across her belly.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘I’d better let you sleep.’
‘Yes, you should,’ she said, and she kissed me on the cheek.
* * *
I went back to my flat in London the next morning and didn’t leave the house again all day. I read the entire manuscript, from its prologue through to the resonating three letters, END. I tore my eyes away only when the ache from my prone body became a distraction from Richard’s words, and my stomach yelled louder than my internal narrator.
I finished Richard’s novel in the early hours of Monday morning. By then, I had migrated from the kitchen table to the sofa and finally to the bedroom. I rolled over like a glutton, fully sated, and stared at the ceiling; the blanket of mountain ranges in the plaster. I felt again that Richard was with me, just as he had been in that hotel room, and that he had been standing behind me all day as I read, looking over my shoulder and occasionally berating himself on a typo or grammatical error. He was in the chair in the corner of my room, just out of sight.
Sleep began to nibble at the edge of my consciousness; my thoughts tangled. Richard’s hold on this reality weakened and, before long, I was alone. Not long afterwards, I dozed off, dreaming of Dead Letters.
Richard’s final novel was about a boy evacuated to the countryside during the closing years of World War Two. Timothy was a ten-year-old, unable to forget a trauma that had rendered him mute. He met Imogen, a little older, an orphan who had been living in a forgotten room beneath the village post office. Brought together by the shadowy Postmaster, who directed their errands, the children delivered messages to ghosts, releasing them from limbo. Timothy and Imogen became firm friends as they liberated the lost souls of the village.
At first, I was confused by the change in the direction of Richard’s writing. He was an established purveyor of high-fantasy fiction. Even Pursuit into Shadow, for all its emotional heft, had sorcery, swordfights and princesses in distress. Dead Letters had more in common with The Railway Children. Its narrative was cast in the deep reds and browns that photographs and costume dramas have conditioned us to believe were the primary colours of the period. If that wasn’t change enough, the idea of the main characters being children, rather than weathered heroes, was cause for enquiry.
None of that mattered.
After a few pages, Richard’s words began to trigger something in me. I had approached the novel as a forensic analyst, primed to pick it apart for clues but, pretty soon, I got caught up in the story and forgot all about that. Still, Richard was never far, a shadowy presence across those pages. The writing was tinged with loss. I could picture Richard at his laptop, thinking back to all the things he regretted in his life. More than once, I cried. Would this be my final connection to my lost friend?
That’s why I made a point of finishing the novel before turning in for the night. I needed to truly experience Dead Letters before I could begin to analyse it. I would start the following morning afresh.
Before taking another look at the first chapter, I made a point of showering and eating properly. Theories had formed as I dreamed. I returned to Richard’s account of Timothy’s first encounter with a ghost, reflecting on the scene and the poor spectre’s tragic story. I thought about Amy, about how and why she feared Richard’s words.
A little later, I phoned her.
‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’ Amy said.
I glanced down at my wristwatch. It had barely turned seven.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve been reading Richard’s novel, and I guess I lost track of time.’
A few moments of silence.
‘I’m sorry,’ I repeated. ‘It’s just… I think I know why Richard sent you the manuscript.’
‘You know where he is?’ Amy was wide awake now.
‘Not exactly.’ I hesitated. I hadn’t planned out this conversation properly. Finally, I settled on: ‘Are you free today? Can we meet?’
‘I don’t know, Chris. It’s difficult. Can’t you just tell me over the phone?’
I gulped down my incredulity at her lack of enthusiasm. ‘This is important.’
Wasn’t it her that set me down this path? How could she bail on me so early? Now, of course, I realise that her actions had been less about passing the baton than the bomb.
‘Listen,’ I assured her, ‘it will only take a few hours. I’ll pick you up and take you there.’
‘Where?’ Amy’s frown saturated her tone.
‘Please,’ I said, ‘just trust me.’
Here's a book with a super fun and engaging premise. Richard, an eccentric fantasy author, disappears long enough to be presumed dead. Until his ex-girlfriend receives a cryptic message alongside the manuscript of his next novel called Dead Letters and shares it all with an old friend.
Amy and Chris then follow clues within the story hoping to find Richard, but their trip around the UK reveals forces, both personal and external (and ridiculous), working for and against them.
Chris tells the story, captivated as he is by Richard’s treasure hunt. But he’s also worried about his friend, a feeling that grows worse the deeper they dig into the manuscript’s truths. Amy, heavily pregnant and afraid of her ex’s mind games, is less keen. Nevertheless, she joins forces with Chris to solve the fictional puzzle.
They make a compelling duo, part intelligence, part eager curiosity. Their connection to Richard brings up poignant moments regarding the man and his influence over their lives.
The characters in the titular manuscript are also important to the overall puzzle. You’re invited to work out who they relate to in Richard’s life and what their adventures mean.
In other words, Dead Letters has a plot within a plot, all directly tying into different characters and what they represent. So, it's a good idea to pay attention or reread the whole book to make sense of some twists and hints, especially when it comes to the ending.
Some parts of that are a tiny bit vague and underwhelming, but I still enjoyed the story from start to finish. There are lots of elements that keep you invested and entertained, such as secret societies and agents, discussions about authorship and fantasy fiction culture, and themes of mental health and escapism.
The narrative style is a major asset, too. Despite the occasional tangent and tour guide feel, the characters and plot develop wonderfully. I was quickly immersed and swept away by the parallel tales that pulled my heartstrings and made me laugh out loud.
Dead Letters is a great book to pick up next. If you're a fan of light-hearted yet meaningful adventures with good characters and literary cores, you won't be disappointed.