Jared Young's devious thriller, This Will Be the End of Me, warps the standard country-house mystery around a perversely playful take on quantum theory.
While most people expect to experience a midlife crisis or two, Joshua Hoffman is undergoing 10 simultaneously. His imminent 40th birthday prompts him to rally 10 versions of himself from alternate realities by way of a slick new technology from the OtherSelf Corporation. The plan is to spend the milestone occasion at the host's luxurious home in the woods outside Ottawa, Ontario, drinking, playing video games, and reflecting on the decisions that spurred each iteration off from the others.
To better differentiate one another, they assume "absurd... fifth-rate superhero code names," such as "the Argentinian" for the jet-setter based in South America, "the Philosopher" for the enterprising podcaster, and perhaps most inanely, "the Penciller" for the one who became a comics artist. Each presents himself with his best foot forward, highlighting his successes in career, family, and sexual prowess. It's the exact sort of masculine chest thumping that tends to stir envy and tempt hostility among those who feel inadequate--which is all of them. Some are hiding marital strife, some abuse allegations. It's not long before Joshua Hoffmans start turning up dead.
What begins as a surreal premise fit for an episode of television's Rick and Morty expands dimensionally into a pensive murder mystery contending with knotty dilemmas around free will, ambition, and regret. By understating the situational physics and instead submerging in each Joshua's consciousness, Young relentlessly interrogates why a modern man might thoroughly unravel himself despite everything he has going for him.
There is no doubt that the killer is Joshua Hoffman, but which one and why are questions made all the more provocative by how readily one version can assume the identity of another. "We are... not capable of strangling a man to death" is a protestation undermined by every Joshua's powerful predisposition toward self-loathing, self-sabotage, and suicide ideation. This Will Be the End of Me excels when it confronts this particular darkness dead on.
Young tugs the suspense taut as a garrote. His introspection cuts like a blade. It's a ruthless combination perfect for armchair sleuths as well as fans of life-affirming multiverse reckonings like Blake Crouch's Dark Matter. --Dave Wheeler, senior editor, Shelf Awareness
Shelf Talker: Jared Young's ingeniously warped murder mystery interrogates one man from 10 different angles to uncover why he might do himself in.