Niki's Review: The Wedding Column Murders by Jeffrey Metzger
A series of murders rock the wealthy elite of New York City, rocking the rich little community. Ethan, a member of the 1% has known all the victims and is roped in by the police to help understand the crimes and the elite victims. You see, the police are having trouble getting into the hush hush circles of New York’s Finest.
Ethan’s family, though still on the pedestal, is slipping from their standing and soon will just be a normal human part of the 99%, but Ethan has done a great job of hiding this fact from his friends and the police. He happily gives them insight into the lives of the murdered victims.
The book opens after the first three victims. Ethan, as part of this rich group of young people, knows them all. Not well, in every case, but in passing, at least. And he spent time with each fairly close to the end of their lives. It took those three murders to find a possible connection. The Vow’s Column in the Primrose. A newspaper column that focused on upcoming nuptials of the rich of New York. Ethan isn’t engaged, but his sister is, and her column is set to run in just a couple weeks’ time.
The police, so desperate for information, keep feeding Ethan more and more sensitive info involved in the case, and, as someone who worked in law enforcement (as a civilian) for almost a decade, I knew there was something amiss in all this.
And boy was I right.
As the murders pile up and the meetings between Ethan and the detectives become more frequent, it’s hard to wonder what’s going to stop the killer and who his next victim is.
I’m happy to say I figured out the twist, will you?
*Spoilers below*
Ethan and his father are going to visit his dad’s old business partner because his daughter, Bella, was murdered. His father and his old business partner, Max start talking about three murders in as many weeks of ‘high society’ folk while Ethan listens. There is one thing (besides being rich) that they have in common. They were all featured in the Primrose, a newspaper, to announce their engagements.
When Ethan and his dad get home, his mother and them further discuss the murders going back and forth on if there is a connection at all and trying to decide if the Primrose is a real lead or just a weird coincidence. Ethan’s sister comes home toward the end of the discussion and discusses how amazing her Insta profile is and makes a jab at her father’s closing business, which gets her twenty-something ass sent to her room without dinner.
Since Ethan knew all the victims and had recently been in contact with (the night of, in fact), the police call him in to get a little more info on him and how their social circle works. He has to leave work at his father’s company to meet with the detectives. It turns out the social elite is a tough group to crack and they hope that Ethan will give them some much-needed insight into the workings of his social circle and shed light on anything that may connect the three victims. Ethan obliges and spills the tea on each of the victims in question. Politely, of course, because they are all rich and have to protect each other.
Then we learn how close to the murders Ethan really was. One victim was strangled in her apartment and Ethan had been there that night, though there are several witnesses acknowledging he’d left before she’d died. One, he’d talked to on the phone the night he was shot and killed in a dark alley. The third had been poisoned at a party where Ethan, as well as all the trust-fund babies, partied. Ethan sheds as much light as possible on his last contact with each victim and their families as possible.
If it seems like I’m throwing unnecessary shade at the circle, it’s not me. You see, Ethan’s family is quickly falling from the 1% and his father’s business isn’t being bought out for big bucks, or closing because they are moving on to bigger and better things. No, Ethan’s dad made some poor choices, ones Ethan wasn’t fully on board with, and they are losing everything. Ethan is bitter and trying to hide it but it seeps into his words.
Anyway, all anyone can talk about is the murders and it keeps coming up over and over again with people offering new thoughts or confirming what he already believed. His family (minus his sister because she’s both a loudmouth and too delicate to deal with the discussion), his friends, the news, it’s everywhere Ethan goes.
He’s heading to a dinner party where he’s hoping politics won’t come up because the president just tweeted something about ‘the country filing for bankruptcy’ and even though he doesn’t want to talk about it, he thinks about the country’s history in-depth for his entire trip to the party. There was a nice president that with an interesting backstory who cared about the country and was great. Now there is the crazy guy who has recently taken up the mantle. He spreads conspiracy theories and goes off on Twitter constantly. It’s a lot of politics obviously based on the very recent past. If you’re someone, like me, who is just exhausted by politics, especially the recent nightmare that was…everything really, and tired of dragging up the past, this chapter is going to be a bit rough to get through. At this point, I wasn’t sure what this had to do with the murders. Ethan was so many and so consumed by how much of an idiot this president was. What is the point of this internal monologue? Is there a political tie? Is Ethan just saturated in it like all of America has been for the past (you know, I was going to say all of 2020, but really, it’s been going on for like five years now) many years? Is it just an insight into Ethan’s angry, fragile mind? There is a reason. I just had to find it.
Then he gets to the party. It’s full of some pretty vapid people that MC kind of knows by association, but doesn’t really like or want to know better. Luckily, the president’s tweet doesn’t come up. They touch on the murders but then the conversation turns to poor people. At one point, someone asks whether or not ‘poor people still exist’. I’m not rich and I’ve never been to New York…but is this a real thing that 20 somethings could think? Terrifying because I suppose it’s possible. One person says something along the lines of ‘oh but I thought the government created a base income for poor people and now everyone was ok!’ and someone responds ‘no, that didn’t pass but they all have marijuana!’. Sigh. It makes me feel a certain way… The conversation then devolved into that poor people are lazy and if they wanted money, they should work harder or move to somewhere like Mexico. These are real conversations I’ve heard (though they are usually attributed to Republicans and these people are implied to be Democrats, so I guess the political hate is well rounded in this book. I will say, for a book about murder, there is a lot of biting commentary on America’s political climate woven in.). This book’s view on politics is very timely, for sure. I personally found the deep dives hard to get into since the last year was…such a mess. However, it does a good job of showing where Ethan’s mind is and how dramatic things are in his head.
And then, in the middle of the dinner party, the only person at the party Ethan really knew and got along with (besides the invitees, naturally) disappears. It’s right as they are sitting down to eat so Ethan offers to go look for him. And boy does he find him. Dead. In the hallway.
**I know I said spoilers before, but beyond this point spoils the twist. If you haven’t read The Wedding Column Murders yet, turn back now, snatch up this book, and come back once you’ve read it!**
The police show up and the detectives let Ethan sit in on the interviews with each member at the dinner party. Now…I just can’t see this ever happening. It’s crazy. There has to be a reason. And this is when I just knew we had to be dealing with an unreliable narrator. I don’t know if he imagined the interviews or eavesdropped on them or what, but this is when I knew Ethan was (either in or the cause of) some serious trouble. There was no other explanation. This chapter closes out with one of the girls ending her interview saying she’s disappointed they never got to eat and her asking the hostess if she could take some home. So cold. So insane. Unreliable narrator again? It makes so much sense when you realize Ethan’s just a bag of lies.
The next day, Ethan gets a call from the detective and meets with them again because they want to show him something. They show him a letter written by the killer. It’s got details about each murder that the detective says are correct. It’s signed with the number 5. Five what? Victims? Maybe…but for whatever reason, the detective thinks it has to do with baseball since it was Joe DiMaggio’s number. Again, unreliable narrator and maybe the police knew exactly what the 5 was (I didn’t yet) and are playing Ethan like a fiddle. The detective says, ‘since they’ve told him this much, they may as well tell him everything’ and even though this isn’t how police really work, it could still be something police will tell someone to make them think they are on the inside. MC has a connection to every murder and found the most recent victim so I’m pretty sure the police, at this point, consider him a suspect and are lying to him to get some good info. I haven’t figured out if the detectives know the deal at this point or are fishing, but there is something odd going on for sure, and it’s hard to tell exactly what through the eyes of our narrator. But going forward from this point, I was under the belief that the police had his number and everything happening was simply the police building a case.
They then have him read each of the victim’s Vows Column entries. They are long and detailed and basically, each one talks about and how each one is something like an influencer, or (essentially) a trust fund baby, or some other kind of rich kid that flaunts their wealth and then focuses heavily on the accomplishments of their parents, you know, the ones that did something and earned all the money. Is this what real wedding announcements are like for super-rich kids who get married? They are really long and some were downright embarrassing and I couldn’t imagine my wedding announcements being so weird. But I’m not rich, so what do I know. They did give some valuable insight to the reader about the dead folks. And we do live in a strange society, so yeah. Maybe this is how they would read.
The detective makes a comment that the killer wants to be caught or he wouldn’t have written the letter.
Ethan gets stopped on the street by a TMZ type reporter that confuses him with Eddie Bauer and asks him about diamond cufflinks and about if he’s worried about the 1% that’s being murdered around him. Ethan lets his temper get the better of him and mouths off before realizing what’s happening and retreating into his office.
Early the next morning, Ethan is awoken from a phone call from his father telling him they printed his sister’s wedding announcement in the Vows column, even though the Primrose said they would hold off on printing anymore. There is a second couple’s column printed as well. Turns out, his sister threatened to sue if they didn’t print it and the second couple was traveling the world and unable to be contacted, so the paper ran it fearing more backlash if they pulled the column without their support.
His sister’s column is as cringy as the rest stating how both have IBS and she’s been ashamed of it her whole life, and a terrible poem the husband to be had written. It talks about how he is Instagram famous and just shows how out of touch both are with reality. It’s truly wild and I wonder how much of the strangeness is just filtered through Ethan’s rage. For example, he reads the unknown couple’s column and it’s much of what you’d expect from an announcement. It focuses on the couple, it’s complimentary. There isn’t anything TMI or embarrassing. But Ethan doesn’t know this couple, so what judgment does he have to pass on them? None.
Ethan texts his sister about the columns and she gushes about how their Instagram following has gone up and seems unbothered that one of the four people featured will likely be murdered.
Ethan isn’t able to stay in town and see how everything plays out. He’s due in the Philadelphia offices and has a lot of work once he arrives to prepare to shut it down.
The next day, he finds out his sister has been murdered. Here is an excerpt:
"Tuesday morning around ten o’clock I received the news that Alana had been murdered. It was Maura who called and told me, and she kept the conversation mercifully brief and businesslike. I waited a few minutes and called Mother, but couldn’t get through. I went back to work and then eventually left for lunch, avoiding the conversation with my parents as they seemed to be doing with me.
When I returned from lunch Ms. Graham was at her desk. We exchanged what seemed to me fairly strained nods of greeting as I passed her and went into my office. Just as I settled in at my desk there was a knock at the door. I called out for whoever it was to enter, and Ms. Graham’s neatly-bunned head coiled around the door. “I’m sorry, Mr. Balfour, I forgot to tell you. A Detective Allison called from New York. He said he was driving down and should be here around two o’clock. He asked you to please be sure to be here to meet him. He said it was urgent.” Now her hand appeared from behind the door, holding a small piece of paper which she read. “He said he needs to talk to you about the windows at the Hastings’ apartment.” She looked down at the paper again. “He also said new information has come up about Ms. Turner’s case, and he needs to talk to you about it as soon as possible.”
He could literally not care less that his sister has died. And if there were still any questions here about what was going on, this should have been a HUGE red flag.
Instead of waiting for the detective, Ethan tells the receptionist to lie about where he’s at for a while and tell him to wait before finally telling him that Ethan has left for New York and won’t be meeting him. Oh, and Ethan tells the woman to remind the detective that E is the fifth letter of the alphabet. Dun dun dun.
Ethan then details how he killed each one, saying the only one he really felt bad for was Bella, the poisoning victim.
And why? Because they were all rich and stupid. And he was losing his money. And they were terrible people. It was a stupid motive, for sure, but one I absolutely believe. Serial killers always have stupid reasons. I totally believe some ‘poor little rich boy’ who was losing his way of life would snap and do this. Ethan felt like the killer to me and he felt real. I don’t always get these twists right, but I felt like once I’d gotten this one, nothing else made sense. I was super pleased with myself for putting the pieces together here and realizing that Ethan was our bad guy. He was a real jerk. It made the whole book fun to read!
If you like murder mystery books, unreliable narrators, and angry social commentary, this might just be the book for you. I suggest giving Jeffrey Metzger's The Wedding Column Murders a go!
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