Just when I think my heart has been captured by the newest romances, or I’m getting swept away into a fantasy novel, I read mysteries such as Alex Pavesi’s Ink Ribbon Red, which make me fall in love with the crime genre all over again and, ultimately, win the day for me.

Every year, a group of six friends gather at a luxurious home in the country to celebrate their friend Anatol’s birthday. However, this year, after Anatol’s father dies in a tragic accident, the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death lead Anatol’s friends to suspect that he murdered his father. Despite this, Anatol insists on his birthday tradition of the friends competing at writing the best crime story. Each friend must draw one of their names out of a hat and write their murder, with the best motive, method, and death voted as the winner. But where do the lines between fiction and reality blur? In their stories, how much is purely creative imagination, and how much is making the most of the perfect opportunity to carry out their darkest and bloodiest desires on each other?

Pavesi is a magician at storytelling, whipping out tricks and illusions that slip past your eye as you tear through the pages. Alternating back and forth over the course of three days, each character is as deceptive and traitorous as the others, yet nothing is as it seems. As well as being testament to Pavesi’s own mastery of truth and lies, Ink Ribbon Red is a love letter to all crime writers: to their originality, perceptiveness, and ingenuity in weaving endless webs of mystery and murder, always testing, entertaining and shocking us with their stories.

So, settle in and get comfy – this is not a book you will be putting down easily.