Win a copy of Can You Solve The Murder? by Antony Johnston in this week's Fabulous book competition
IF you love a murder mystery and grew up reading choose-your-own-adventure novels, then grab a copy of this brilliant book.
Step into a detective's shoes when you arrive at Elysium wellness retreat to find the body of a local businessman – and a host of suspects and motives!
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10 lucky Fabulous readers will win a copy of this new novel in this week's book competition.
To win a copy, enter using the form below by 11:59pm on June 14, 2025.
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Times
a day ago
- Times
Corny, clichéd, lazy — James Frey's eat-the-rich novel is cynical tosh
James Frey boasts that it took him a mere 57 days to write Next to Heaven, a trashy murder-mystery set among the bored ultra-rich in Connecticut. This I can believe. There are books that gain a kinetic force from being composed in a feverish sprint and then there are books where you wonder if some hapless editor has sent the wrong draft to the printer. Next to Heaven feels less like a novel than notes for a novel, prompts even, almost as if Frey tossed together a few reference points — Bret Easton Ellis, Jackie Collins,Couples by John Updike — and asked a a certain large-language model to come up with the goods, although he swears blind he didn't use AI to write it. OK, he conceded to Vanity Fair magazine that he used ChatGPT to help with brand names; and it's impossible to avoid Google's AI these days. But on the creativity point he defended his integrity emphatically: 'I don't use generative AI to write ever, just so we're clear,' he said. I suppose we'll just have to take the author of A Million Little Pieces (2003) at his word. It's just that it reads almost uncannily like a cynical remix of any number of super-rich satires or thrillers we've been treated to in recent years. Like Liane Moriarty's novel Big Little Lies, the story is set in a 'picture perfect' small town. It features a gossipy Greek chorus narration and a heavily foreshadowed murder. There are frustrated cops, themes of domestic abuse and rape and an unlikely sisterhood, which given the tone of Frey's previous book, Katerina ('Cum inside me. Cum inside me. Cum inside me'), seems unlikely to have been born from any native feminist instinct. Then, like the recent TV drama Your Friends and Neighbors starring Jon Hamm, it features a Connecticut fund manager who gets fired, can't bring himself to tell his family and maintains his lavish lifestyle by pinching Patek Philippe watches from his neighbours. But, whatever. Aren't all these eat-the-rich stories about sex, divorce and murder merging into one anyway? And isn't shamelessness the quality Frey, 55, is best known for? He claims he dreamt of becoming 'the most controversial writer on the planet' — not the best, the most controversial. He shot to fame after his drugs memoir A Million Little Pieces was championed by Oprah Winfrey. It then emerged that he had invented large chunks of it. It brought controversy, a South Park parody, millions of sales and precisely zero contrition (as one of the characters in Next to Heaven thinks after she has duped everyone: 'Hahaha. It worked. Hahaha. Hahaha.') 'I grew up with a f*** you attitude,' this maverick has said in interviews, a phrase he puts in the mouth of many of his risk-taking, self-destructive characters. Katerina (2018) won a bad sex award and was described by one critic as 'an impressive attempt at career suicide'. And yet Frey seems to have failed even in this attempt because here he still is. Next to Heaven centres on a drug-fuelled sex party dreamt up by Devon and Belle, the richest two wives in chichi New Bethlehem (a name taken from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood). Devon, an art dealer who comes from old money, is looking to escape her marriage of convenience to Billy, a sadistic bitcoin billionaire with a portrait of Eric Trump on the wall. Belle, who hails from a family of rich criminals in Texas, lives in a property that's 'staffed the f*** up' with nannies, housekeepers and stable hands. Her gentle husband, Teddy, is impotent — unable to achieve 'a coconut-cream explosion'. • What we're reading this week — by the Times books team Devon craves sex with Alex, a former NFL quarterback who has lost his banking job but hasn't told his wholesome wife, Grace. Meanwhile, Belle wants to bed Charlie, a hockey coach, who is dating Katy, a maths teacher with a tragic backstory. All the women are beautiful with olive skin. Devon's beloved housekeeper, Ana, has particularly beautiful olive skin and must sleep with her boss to send money back to her husband and child in Costa Rica. So all the ingredients are here for another titillating tale of rape and retribution among the 1-per-centers complete with Chanel dresses, Boca do Lobo sofas, limited-edition Yeezys, Ode à la Rose orchids, Roche Bobois chairs etc. Next to Heaven confirms that Frey is a very, very lazy writer. His sentences read like schoolboy attempts at hardboiled style — 'He had it all. And he had always had it all' — and contain some of the corniest lines I've read in fiction ('promises are like glass and they break just as easily'). Then there are the parts where he takes flight: 'Oh the night! Oh the dark! Where promises are made and kisses exchanged, where secrets are born and shared, where hearts entwine and passions ignite.' Frey doesn't let editors touch a word of his — this I can also believe. What's particularly strange, given that he's such a 'bad boy', is that he completely fluffs the wife-swapping soirée. After one paragraph in which the men all size each other up, the characters slope off to have very tame (or depressing) heterosexual intercourse. James, goddammit, it's an orgy! He takes more care describing the party invitations. • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List For a book about bad behaviour, the characters behave in remarkably boring and predictable ways. They have no foibles or contradictions. No one in the novel feels remotely real. The characters are dead, the language is dead and it says terrible things about publishing that this ever saw the light of day. It's also coming to a TV near you because Frey sold the screen rights before the manuscript — 'Hahaha. It worked. Hahaha. Hahaha.'Next to Heaven by James Frey (Swift £18.99 pp336). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
Missing Connecticut detective found dead in 'deplorable' home eight months after vanishing
A missing Connecticut detective who vanished a year ago has been found dead inside her 'deplorable' home, buried in 'mountains' of debris. Mary A. Notarangelo, 73, was last seen alive on June 12, 2024 and was reported missing on July 3 last year by a man who often helped her with tasks around her home in Glastonbury - about 15 minutes outside of Hartford. The retired Bridgeport police detective's skeletal remains were found February 24 - about eight months after she mysteriously disappeared. Officials used a small excavator to access her hoarder home, Marshall Porter, chief of the Glastonbury Police Department, told CT Insider Tuesday. Authorities initially tried to search the home several times prior with a cadaver dog, a drone and staff from the state's environmental agency and biohazard waste collection company, but were not successful, according to Porter. Officers failed to get in the home on their own because of six-foot-tall piles of items, he said, adding that they 'weren't equipped to handle' what was inside. Firefighters also attempted to search for her from the roof, Porter noted. 'I've never seen such deplorable conditions,' Porter said. 'Hoarders usually have paths. But this was like just piled floor to almost ceiling. You literally would have had to climb over stuff.' At one point during the search, a drone used by police to search her home became disabled after it hit cobwebs, according to a police report obtained by ABC News. Dead birds were also found in cages inside the home, along with live mice and a cat roaming around, police said. 'Once inside, I observed more mountains of garbage, cobwebs, and spiders,' Officer Anthony Longo wrote in the report. 'There was no path whatsoever. The only way to move from room to room was by climbing over the garbage.' The man who called police for a welfare check on Notarangelo's home on July 3, 2024, said she last texted him on June 12 complaining of abdominal cramps, vomiting, and told him she had fallen. It's unclear why it took her friend, who did not return phone calls or text messages from her, so long to notify police. It is also unclear why it took so long to find her remains, despite police searching on July 5, July 11, July 12 and November 20 of last year. They also searched the woods around her home, but police were not convinced she ventured out there because she was known to use a walker to get around, Porter stated. Notarangelo appeared to live a very reclusive life in her later years, according to a few people who told ABC News they had trouble getting in contact with her over the past couple of years. On September 17, 2024 a friend posted to Facebook asking the public to help locate Notarangelo. 'My friend Mary Angel Notarangelo has been reported missing. She is [a] former (Retired) Detective Sargent [sic] with the Bridgeport Police Department. Please make this viral,' Patti Steeves wrote. 'I knew she lived in Glastonbury but did not know her street address. I tried to Google her to see if I could find it. It was then [that] I learned of her being missing report. She has been on my mind often recently for me to want to reach out to her, and now I am upset with myself for not doing so sooner.' Steeves went on to reveal that her old friend had a brother, but she could not 'remember his name.' 'She was passionate about her faith. She was passionate about her job. She had a great sense of humor. And she loved her animals. She loved her animals more than she did herself,' Steeves told ABC News. 'It's so upsetting and so sad... She, as quirky as she was, she was a good person at heart.' She said she tried her best to help out her friend with her hoarding habit, and that Notarangelo was a 'bird fanatic' who owned about 20 birds, including cockatiels, parrots and cockatoos. She also owned a cat and dog, Steeves noted. On September 17, 2024 a friend of hers posted to Facebook asking the public to help locate Notarangelo Porter said he feared the $100,000 mission to find her in February would fail, as an environmental services firm that specializes in waste removal brought in 'pokers' to remove the debris one layer at a time. 'They were prepared with equipment and dumpsters to excavate the entire house,' he said, adding that not long into the clean up they found her dead body. Very little is known about Notarangelo, but according to past voting records, she was a registered Independent, per reviewed by CT Insider. The state legislator's judiciary committee approved payment of a claim she made in 2004, but it is unclear how much she received, according to records. She also posted to social media from time to time sharing her love for animals and calling herself an 'intuitive & reiki master,' per ABC News. Notarangelo also posted videos of her on outings with her beloved birds, as one of them was seen perching on a shopping cart while at a craft store, the outlet found.
The Sun
2 days ago
- The Sun
Goodnight Sweetheart fans will finally discover what happened to Gary Sparrow after show's controversial axe
GOODNIGHT Sweetheart fans will finally get the answers they have been searching for thanks to a brand new project in the works. Viewers of the programme will learn the fate of Gary Sparrow after many questions were left unanswered following the show's controversial axing by the BBC. 3 3 The programme, starring Nicholas Lyndhurst of Only Fools and Horses fame, originally ran from 1993 until 1999. Fans were left over-the-moon when it made a one-off comeback in 2016 with many who worked on the show hoping that it paved the way for another full-length series but the BBC failed to commission it for anything else. Now, the show's writing duo, Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, have teamed up to pen a new novel to explore what happened to Gary after the end of the TV programme. But the pair have already been forced to call upon fans help. The writers are aiming to raise £30,000 via a crowd-funding site in order to bring the book to life. At the time of publication, this petition had already amassed a whopping £11,500 in donations from 211 supporters. The book will only be published if the fund manages to reach the target amount. Teasing what is to come in the novel, a synopsis reads: "The new book will begin a little before the events of the 2016 televised story, Many Happy Returns, because though Gary's life since the end of the war has been mundane, in the spring of 1962, things are starting to heat up when Marilyn Monroe sings at President Kennedy's birthday party in that skin-tight dress. "When Gary first met Phoebe, he told her the girl he left behind in L.A. went by the name of Marilyn Monroe. "It was just his little private joke. It had never occurred to him that he would be living in the past, married to Phoebe when Marilyn became an international sex symbol in the 1950s. The Nineties sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart returned for a one-off special set in 1962 "For years, every time Phoebe's seen Marilyn on the silver screen, her insecurities have overwhelmed her. "What if Gary were to go back to Hollywood to regain the love of his life? "That is, until Marilyn's shock death at the age of 36, which brings all of Phoebe's old feelings back to the surface." Speaking of their decision to pen a new book and their hopes for its publication, authors Laurence and Maurice said: "Of all the shows we have ever written, Goodnight Sweetheart has the biggest and most devoted fanbase. "We were thrilled at the audience response to the 2016 special. Like our fans, we want to know what happened next to Gary Sparrow and his two families. "And now, Idiot Box [publishers] are giving us and you the chance to find out!" The TV show's premise followed Gary Sparrow as he lived a double life being able to time-hop between 1990s London and the Second World War in the 1940s.
