The Other Half (Hardback)

An incredible crime debut. THE OTHER HALF is the love child of Evelyn Waugh and Susie Steiner, I devoured it. Gripping, funny, enraging and incisive.

Imagine A Handful of Dust meets The Great Gatsby on a Northern Line tube to Kentish Town. That’s The Other Half by Charlotte Vassell, a crime thriller as sharp, witty and energetic as it is bitingly satirical. Vassell’s lively prose is utterly compelling and so stylish she can meld ancient Greece and 21st Century London without batting a Euclid. Reminded me of Waugh with every turn of the page. In The Other Half she might just have created a Vile Bodies for the Millennial generation.

THE OTHER HALF by Charlotte Vassell is an incredibly accomplished debut - the writing is pin-sharp and skewers class and pretension with hilarious precision. The plot is complex but well handled, and the characters - especially the protagonist Caius - are brilliant and so well realised. I really hope this is a series, because I can't wait to read more! Vassell is a unique and much-needed voice in crime fiction, and sure to be a new favourite for many!

A scintillating debut which shifts effortlessly from the sacred to the profane by combining a cast of compulsively ghastly characters, a truly engaging cop, Ancient Greek, Instagram, a corpse on the Heath and a butler in McDonald’s. Much of what I loved about The Secret History is to be found here, but with a thoroughly modern sensibility all of its own.

Donna Tartt for the North London glitterati - sharp, funny writing meets tight plotting in a unique, new voice.

Charlotte Vassell's debut novel The Other Half is a sinister, erudite, and clever whodunit; a modern story propelled by literary allusions and a sophisticated wit that seem to have sprung from the era of the bright, young things.