Continuing my weekly tour through favorite books of 2025, today we arrive at my favorite genre-bender and overall funnest book:
Who Killed One the Gun? by Gigi Little
Forest Avenue Press
I don’t know how to talk about this book other than to say, just read it. It’s so good. Several people I know are getting this book as a birthday present in 2026.
So what can I say that doesn’t give too much away? A (self-described) third-rate private eye gets stuck in a time loop after being killed. He has to solve the case he was working on before he died and his own murder.
It’s delicious. It’s funny. And fun. Gigi Little plays with language in delightful ways. It’s quirky in the best, truest way. It plays with a lot of noir tropes and subverts expectations. Every character’s name is a number followed by a rhyme. They all have distinct voices and personas, and are memorable. There’s a lot of old-timey radio in the book, and it is a blast.
It’s a murder mystery. Two murder mysteries in one. Since mystery was one of my earliest genres—I was a Nancy Drew kid—and is the genre I go to in my distraction-seeking listening behaviors, I’m usually good at figuring out whodunit. Sometimes that’s fun because it’s ego-satisfying to be ahead of the game and figure things out and be right. Sometimes it’s not so fun, more boring and obvious.
I won’t say whether I thought both murders were committed by the same person or different people, but I had a strong suspicion on one of the cases and a weak suspicion on the other. The weak suspicion ended up being partially right, and the strong suspicion was dead wrong.
It was so fun to be so wrong!
Again, I don’t want to say anything that would detract from the reading experience by revealing too much beforehand, so just READ THIS BOOK!
Chrys
Image Description: The cover of Who Killed One the Gun? showing a man (One the Gun) dead on a clock spiral and featuring blurbs by Mo Davies and Lidia Yuknavitch.
Chrys Buckley 