Book Review: First to Fall

A figure skating murder mystery

First to Fall by C L Pattison is the very first murder mystery book that I’ve read. It was a suggestion when I was looking for books that accurately portrayed figure skating while writing Salt and Ice, and after seeing that it was very recent, published in 2025, I requested that it be stocked at my local library. It finally came in, and I was eager to give it a read.

This review may be a little spoilery if you want to read it. I will try to be vague, but if you read the book after reading this review, you’ll probably get what I’m referencing immediately, even if I don’t use the characters’ names.

The first half of the book is a bit like a figure skating reality show (without the TV crew) where a group of skaters are competing at a private estate to master a complicated skating pattern, and they will be eliminated from the competition one by one, with only the last survivor being able to learn the entire sequence. This choreographic sequence started with a triple salchow jump, and then began the choreographed moves. As described:

“… the real skill comes from melding them together so the transitions are utterly seamless. It’s all about utilising the entire surface of the ice to showcase your creativity and using changes of direction and rotation to keep the sequence dynamic and engaging. It’s not just my feet you need to watch, it’s my hand placement, my head position, my facial expression. Every single movement should be intentional and executed with precision.”

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I was impressed with the skating accuracy through this portion of the book and was thoroughly engaged, especially since so many figure skating books have little or zero accuracy.

The first person to be eliminated from the program happened just before the midpoint and was a bit of a surprise in who it was, and this character reacted quite angrily as they left.

Then the first murder took place at the midpoint and, true to calling it the midpoint turn, the entire novel changed course. The figure skating stopped and it was now a murder mystery reminiscent of a murder mystery dinner event.

This is where I feel I am definitely not the right audience. The first murder I could believe, and maybe even the second. But after that, every subsequent murder had me asking really? And then the heavy-handedness in trying to pigeon-hole one particular person into who the murderer had to be was just plain cringeworthy.

At about 2/3 through, I was pretty certain I had figured out who the murderer was. After all, it was in the title, wasn’t it? “First to Fall”? And revenge from being kicked out of the program, if I can’t have it, no one can kind of vibes, seemed like it would fit.

I was wrong.

The killer was revealed right at the end and, to me, it seemed completely random. There were no hints, no suspicious comments, nothing from this character to plant the seeds that maybe they aren’t all they say they are. Perhaps it’s just because I don’t read this genre a lot, but it left me feeling very cheated. I don’t care that I was wrong about who the killer was — I’m nearly always wrong when watching crime series on TV — but in retrospect, I can usually look back and see how the seeds were planted. That wasn’t the case at all with this. Instead, there were two or three chapters at the end, set several months later, that say oh we found damning text messages on their phone, and it was all orchestrated by her mother, whom we had never heard of until then!

Okay, maybe I’m a little salty.

I guess because I went into this book with such high expectations and was actually excited to read something in a brand new genre, and instead of feeling engaged and drawn in, wanting to read more in the genre, I’m left feeling cheated and annoyed. I did consider putting the book down and adding it to my ever-growing DNF pile because of how convoluted and stupid the main characters were being, trying to convince everyone that the killer was someone else, but I wanted to see if who I guessed it to be was correct. I’m glad I finished it, even if it was a bit of a trainwreck that left me feeling frustrated.

Have you read this book? What did you think? Do you have any suggestions on other similar books I should read? Let me know in the comments!

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