Marianne's Reviews > My Best Friend's Murder

My Best Friend’s Murder is the first novel by UK-born Australian author, Polly Phillips. Izzy is at the bottom of the stairs, with a halo of blood forming around her head, while her best friend, Bec carefully examines the scene. What could have led up to this? And what will ensue?

Rebecca Maloney is a Features Assistant with Flare magazine. Isabel Waverly is a busy wife and mother. Bec and Izzy have been best friends since they were eleven. Izzy has a perfect life: a beautiful house in Clapham, money to buy the best of everything, the devotion of the gorgeous Rich, an adorable three-year-old daughter, and parents and in-laws who dote on their grandchild.

Bec’s life, on the other hand, is not quite that: a dingy flat, an ugly dog, a dull dress sense, and a boyfriend who proposes with the wrong sort of ring. Meanwhile her best friend has the man she’d thought, at fifteen, was about to choose her, before Izzy breezed in and took him. And yet, they are friends. After all, Izzy was there when Bec’s mother died, and no-one else was. When it suited her.

Does the story behind that engagement ring set in motion the cascade of events that finds Izzy at the foot of the staircase? Or was it brewing well before that?

The way Bec tells it, Izzy does seem adept at stealing Bec’s thunder, at delivering back-handed compliments, at damning her with faint praise. But does Bec’s long-standing resentment over Rich cause her to lay blame too readily at Izzy’s door, and summarily dismiss her denials?

Initially, the reader will be wondering just how reliable a narrator Bec really is: do her friends actually treat her like a doormat? Are the perceived slights as bad as she describes? And is her clumsiness as accidental as she makes out? Are her faux-pas more intentional than well-intentioned? Or does Bec’s emotional greed sometimes render her the architect of her own downfall?

There aren’t really any characters that will endear themselves to the reader; they are either weak and compliant (or acting that way); or toxic users; thus, care factor very low. And yet, this one’s hard to put down, a bit like being unable to turn away from a train wreck, a compulsion to see just how far things can go wrong. Phillips throws in several red herrings and some jaw-dropping twists before final pages that will leave the reader gasping. A compelling read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Simon & Schuster Australia.