Preamble
As I read and write and think a lot about detective and crime fiction, I’ve a series of reviews on the theme. Sadly, capacity is too limited to cover detective films and TV series too! If you’re interested in reading my academic work about detective and crime fiction (free PDFs available), check it out here.
Or you can take a look at my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies: preorder now!
See also
These lists capture other detective/crime stories and characters that I thought of as I was reading this piece. I won’t explain why, to avoid spoilers, but they’re associations and not ‘if you liked this, then you’ll love…’ recommendations!
- We Need to Talk about Kevin, Lionel Shriver
- Heavenly Creatures (1994 film)
- All of the Six Stories series by Matt Wesolowski, in particular Hydra
- Becky Butler/Poppy White from Only Murders in the Building
Review (4 out of 5)
This is an interesting play on the novel-presented-as-non-fiction trope, one increasingly common in thrillers given the explosion of popular true crime podcasts, ‘documentaries’, films, and books. It takes a cruel child murder in a small town, committed by three teenage girls, and explores the years leading up to the crime and the relationships between victim and killers. As one might expect, everyone is a victim here, in their own way.
I found the middle sections of the novel most compelling. I really enjoyed the characters of the girls themselves. There was something very genuine in their angst, and their relationships and struggles to see themselves or each other with any clarity. Clark writes these characters well and with an eye to detail for the cultural zeitgeist of Tumblr and LiveJournal that carries with it a delicious nostalgia for young-ish women these days.
I found less compelling the details included to fix the novel very precisely into a British cultural moment, with its UKIP-per local politician, Jimmy Savile-esque local criminal, and Brexit. I don’t think the specificity of some of this really adds to the context. I assume the implication of the repeated references to Diamond (the local DJ paedophile) is that all three of the girls are in fact victims of sexual abuse. Otherwise, I don’t especially see the purpose of the references. It felt like Clark attempting to be too clever, too on the nose, but didn’t really contribute to the story.
I did not care for the final few pages; I don’t think they were necessary. In fact, they were clunky. Everyone knows that true crime, like crime solving, builds narratives where, perhaps, sometimes there are none. Whether we call that interpolation or lying is a matter of degree. Perhaps this is because the narrator character isn’t fully fleshed out enough to make us invested in this turn of events. He presents himself as a bit scummy, and indeed he turns out to be. Aren’t most journalists these days? Despite his references to his daughter’s suicide, some of which are heartfelt, we are not really invested in whether he is a good man or not, whether his motives are pure, or even whether his sourcing is. I think this is the point that Clark has in mind: that in fact we do not care so much about the truth, as consumers of true crime. The novel makes us all crime fanfic-ers, like the killers themselves. But for me it felt a little trite, and I would have been much happier with a novel a few pages shorter!
Take a look at my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies: preorder now!
Dominique Gracia 
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