Some lies never die.
Before I get into my main part of the review and comparison I think it should be noted that whilst based around the same story, The Book of Mirrors and Sleeping Dogs both approach the narrative in very different ways, zeroing in on different characters and situations, making it somewhat difficult to discuss the two as one entity. The basis to the murder and most of the main cast remain the same but aside from this we take very different routes to get there and as an adaptation Sleeping Dogs is vastly different to its book counterpart, something which I think has its positives and negatives.
The Book of Mirrors begins with a manuscript being sent to literary agent Peter Katz, detailing the relationship between Richard Flynn and Laura Baines (from Flynn’s POV) as well as their friendship with professor Joseph Wieder and the events leading up to his murder. We then follow both journalist John Keller and retired detective Roy Freeman as they investigate the killing for their own personal motives, each interviewing the friends and co-workers of Flynn and Baines in an attempt to get to the bottom of it all.
The film however focuses entirely on ex-detective Roy Freeman (Russell Crowe), telling the whole story from his POV, skipping out John Keller all together and only referring back to Richard Flynn (named Richard Finn (Harry Greenwood) here) and the manuscript storyline in passing rather than any full focus. Instead we see Freeman as a retired cop experiencing severe memory loss and coming across the case after an advocate of Isaac Samuel (Pacharo Mzembe) reaches out and asks him to take a second look.
The Book of Mirrors definitely had a promising start and I really liked the opening with the manuscript and how Richard’s initial narrative set the scene and introduced us to all of the characters and suspects alike. From here we then went on the hunt for the missing story in an attempt to solve the murder (in a very similar vein to Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders I must say) learning along the way that Richard wasn’t exactly an objective narrator and much of his ‘retelling’ was a mere romantic fantasy. In this regard I really liked how the book played around with fiction versus reality and how we were never quite sure who was telling the truth and who was lying. It was unfortunately the book’s second half that let it down and I feel like the story completely fell off the rails, abandoning much of the previous structure and instead following a completely different group of characters, most of whom had very little connection to the original murder. It felt like a large chunk of this book’s middle was simply fact checking against the original narrative and because most of the important players were either dead or not around it was a little bit confusing as to who was who. What’s more the introduction of a new lead in each separate part meant that there was little flow from one chapter to the next and by the end it felt like I had no idea what was going on.
The film definitely had a much more cohesive storyline than the original novel, focussing entirely from Freeman’s POV and following him throughout the entire investigation. Because of this change we did lose the opening part with the manuscript, which was instead only really mentioned in passing later on, but on the whole the actual mystery and narrative was a lot clearer and I definitely didn’t struggle as much as to what was going on. Laura (Karen Gillian, Guardians of the Galaxy) also had a slightly larger role which I liked because we got more info from the original timeline and not just guesswork or second-hand retellings from friends of friends of suspects. On the whole the film was a lot clearer for me and despite the loss of the original book’s opening I do slightly prefer this narrative retelling here.
Overall The Book of Mirrors and Sleeping Dogs both made for enjoyable pieces of fiction in their own way, each making different choices in narrative style to tell the same story, I think that both mediums had their positives and negatives and to be honest I don’t like one more than the other, both had their flaws and both had their strengths. The book had a really interesting start with the manuscript but then fizzled out slightly whereas the film lacked a lot of the book’s intrigue but had a much clearer storyline and direction. On the whole this definitely isn’t my favourite book or film of all time but it was still interesting to contrast and compare the two.
Ramblings of a Supposed Writer 