Vise Manor by Daniel Verastiqui

Vise Manor

by Daniel Verastiqui

Eccentric tech billionaire Winston Vise has invited eight guests to his secluded home in the New York countryside. His mission: to find investors and buyers for his new line of artificially intelligent synthetic humans. After a lavish evening of drinking and feasting, Winston takes the stage in the conservatory to begin his pitch. But when the demonstration takes a sharp turn into murder, his prospective investors find themselves trapped in the sprawling manor with a killer and no way to call for help.

The doors open automatically at sunrise. Will there be anyone left to see it?

Brimming with veiled looks, dirty secrets, and augmented violence, Vise Manor is a cyberpunk murder mystery sure to delight fans of William Gibson, Richard K. Morgan, and Agatha Christie.

Reviewed by pamela on

4 of 5 stars

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Vise Manor was a wonderful cyberpunk take on the cosy room mystery genre. The cover was what drew me in, but I was quickly drawn into the narrative and found myself quickly forming an attachment to the characters.

What I wasn't expecting was the subtle humour that runs its way through Vise Manor. The opening scenes had me giggling to myself uncontrollably and despite the brutal murders that followed as the plot progressed, it never lost that spark that hooked me from the get-go.

Each character had heart and personality, which meant I never got bored, despite the book being longer than what I usually enjoy in the cyberpunk genre. Trying to guess who would live and die before the end was half the fun, and Verastiqui did a great job of ramping up the mystery without playing his hand. It was very Poirot vs William Gibson's Blue Ant series - two things that should mix but somehow did.

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Reading updates

  • 3 March, 2022: Started reading
  • 7 March, 2022: Finished reading
  • 7 March, 2022: Reviewed