The Last

Three stars for an enjoyable, if unoriginal, post-apocalyptic thriller, let down by an unnecessary and fruitless murder mystery.Spoiler-free review: I received a proof of the book from Viking Books's Twitter account, who described it as ‘an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery set at the end of the world'. Hoping it would capture at least a fraction of the magic of ‘[b:And Then There Were None 16299 And Then There Were None Agatha Christie https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391120695s/16299.jpg 3038872]', I zipped through it in a couple of days. The descriptions of the hotel and occupants were nicely written, and tension was suitably ramped-up as the protagonist grew increasingly suspicious of his fellow survivors.To mention ‘The Last' in the same breath as [a:Agatha Christie 123715 Agatha Christie https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1321738793p2/123715.jpg] is very kind and also misselling it. It played more like an average episode of The Walking Dead, dealing with the realities of survival after the apocalypse and how the relationships of the survivors are affected. Its biggest downfall is that the murder plot became so irrelevant that it could have been removed to no real detriment to the story. At one point, about 70% through, the murder hadn't been mentioned for so long I had forgotten that it was meant to be the main plotline.I enjoyed the majority of the book, but the way that the murder plot is wrapped up was so rushed and half-baked that I couldn't help be disappointed. Avoiding spoilers, the last thirty or so pages pack in so much that the final reveal has no room the breathe. This wasn't helped by the fact that by this point I had no emotional attachment to the murder victim and that the reveal bordered on ridiculous.Thank you to Viking Books UK for supplying me with a copy.