J R Alastor has been a best selling mystery writer for decades – and a mystery himself on top of that. No one has ever met him, but out of the blue, he invites six other mystery writers to a writing retreat on his island. But when they arrive, their host is nowhere to be seen, and they find themselves in the hands of his assistant Maria, playing the games that Alastor has planned for them.

But Maria has plans of her own. While she thinks she knows what Alastor has planned for his victims, I mean guests, she has her own plan for revenge on one particular guest. Before she can do that, however, one guest disappears. A disappearance that wasn’t in any plan that she was aware of. As the guests and staff begin to die, the dwindling survivors desperately try to find Alastor to stop his plan. But is Alastor all they have to be afraid of?

OK, the cynical among you might be thinking this sounds awfully like a certain book by a certain Empress of Crime (I’ve promoted her, she’s so much better than the other three Queens). But you’d be wrong. There are only nine people on the island for a start…

This is a debut novel for Ande Pliego and it’s full of clever ideas. I’ll be honest, I did spend a little time trying to work out of her name was actually a clue in anagram form – it’s not, by the way. Similarly, the review e-copy I had was one of those (other reviewers will know what I’m talking about) where the book titles keeps randomly appearing in the text, along with some odd numbers and dates. So I thought these might be clues as well – and again, they’re not.

One of the problems that our band of… heroes? No, that’s definitely not the right word. Let’s just call them victims. One of the problems that our band of victims has to solve is matching up the names of the people on the island to a list of past crimes. Thief, Liar, Child Killer… but just to add some tension, one of the past crimes is “Serial Killer”, so there’s that to deal with too.

The point of view keeps flipping from character to character – sometimes the chapter in question is only titled by their past crime, so that adds a little something for the reader to try and puzzle out who they’re currently reading about. But in case you’re worried that the book is a giant-sized logic problem, it’s not. It’s a gripping mystery-thriller that goes like the clappers and leaves the reader breathless.

If it’s got a fault, I thought the reveal about Alastor was obvious – I’d have been genuinely surprised if it had been anything other than what it was – but by the end of the book, and having been hoodwinked on some other stuff, I didn’t particularly mind.

All in all, this is a very entertaining read. Not convinced how well clued it is, but it’s a lot of fun and has some good surprises in it, so it’s well worth your time.

Oh, and just to show how despicable Alastor is, in a segment from his book on crime-writing, he shows that he doesn’t understand the term “locked room”. You can’t get more evil than that…

You Are Fatally Invited is out from Random House on 13^th February. Many thanks to the publisher for the review e-copy.