How To Kill Your Biggest Fan – Helen Blair

I downloaded How To Kill Your Biggest Fan from the Libro.fm ALC program based on the strength of the intriguing title alone. Just a few chapters in, I knew I’d found a delightful meta(ish)-mystery in the vein of my favourites Sulari Gentill and Jean Hanff Korelitz.

With a mastery of the form that belies her “debut novelist” status, Helen Blair lays out the story of Hazel Witt, a deeply cynical spinster and veteran romance novelist who receives a Stan-esque letter from a fan. With the help of her assistant, Hazel digs out the previous letters from this fan and quickly realises that she has a stalker – one whose ex-boyfriends often wind up dead under mysterious circumstances.

Under pressure from her flamboyant agent, Hazel uses these disturbing developments to “inspire” a new direction in her career, a thriller novel about a young woman who becomes a serial killer after being burned in love one too many times. Of course, Hazel won’t know how the story should end until her real life situation unfolds.

The bright yellow illustrated cover of How To Kill Your Biggest Fan suggests that it’s a cozy mystery, but I’ll warn you that it’s actually rather dark in places – and yet very, very funny. I loved the hilarious and pragmatic Hazel, her long-suffering assistant Ayo, and (of course) her adorable sausage dog Gerald. (Heads up for fellow dog-lovers: there is a very, very scary moment for Gerald, but I promise he comes through How To Kill Your Biggest Fan unharmed.)

I honestly didn’t realise that this was Blair’s first novel until I listened to the behind-the-scenes Q&A between her and the audiobook’s narrator Susie Riddell. While I’m disappointed that Blair doesn’t have a huge backlist I can immediately dive into, I can’t wait to see what she comes out with next – if How To Kill Your Biggest Fan is the beginning, there are surely great things to come.

Read How To Kill Your Biggest Fan on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)