Escaping the Past

The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood (Penguin trade paperback, 30 July 2013.).

Reviewed by Marlyn Beebe.


The book opens with a scene set in 1986. A girl describes being in what appears to be a prison cell.  She describes herself as "small and alone and scared and confused", and mentions hearing someone named Bel screaming and crying for her mother.  At the end of this short prologue, we learn that Jade and Bel have killed someone named Chloe, and that there appears to be no doubt in anyone's mind about this.

Fast forward to the present day.

Amber Gordon, who works in the custodial department of  an amusement park called Funnland, stumbles across the dead body of a young woman in the hall of mirrors, not the first that season in the small English seaside town of Whitmouth.  Murmurs about serial killers have already been circulating.

Kirsty Lindsay is a freelance journalist who lives in Farnham, with her unemployed husband Jim and their two children.  She doesn't want to take the story about the Whitmouth murders, but since Jim hasn't been able to find a new job, she feels she has no choice. 

It soon becomes apparent that Amber and Kirsty were once Jade and Bel, though it takes some time before we learn which was which.  The story of how each got to where she is is told with flashbacks to 1986, the events of the present, and their own internal dialogues.

The tale is dark and disturbing, but at the same time compelling.  I had to take a break every few chapters, but there was no question that I would keep reading to the [very unexpected] ending.

Alex Marwood is a pseudonym of a successful British journalist, and The Wicked Girls is her debut thriller, although she has published four other novels under the pseudonym Serena Mackesy.



FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to The Penguin Group for the Advance Reading Copy.

Listening to Mysteries

The Boyfriend by Thomas Perry (Tantor Audio book, 5 March 2013).

Reviewed by Marlyn Beebe.

I feel very fortunate to be able to download e-galleys of books from various publishers through services like Edelweiss, and I'm always delighted when I'm granted access to a title I've requested.  Even more so when it's by one of my favorite authors.

I love Thomas Perry's Jane Whitefield series, but it's been over a year since Poison Flower was published.  When I thought I saw the availability of a galley of The Boyfriend (which I mistakenly thought was a standalone), I jumped at it.  When I received approval, I was surprised to realize that it was an audiobook.  I reserve book listening for  driving, but since my trips are seldom very long, it doesn't seem worthwhile.  However,  I gamely downloaded the book, and though it took me 6 weeks, I managed to listen to the whole nine hours without too much confusion.  

The protagonist of the story is Jack Till, a former Los Angeles police detective turned P.I. (who first appeared in 2007's Silence).  In The Boyfriend, Jack lives still lives in the L.A. area.  He has a 24-year-old daughter named Holly, who has Down Syndrome and lives in a group home not far from her father's home.

Jack is visited at his office by a couple who ask him to find the killer of their daughter, Catherine Hamilton.  Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton believe that because Catherine was an high-class call girl, the police are being lax about their investigation.  Jack takes the case, and soon discovers that young women who share Catherine's profession have been murdered every few months in cities around the country.  At first, there doesn't appear to be anything linking these women, apart from their appearance: they are all strawberry blonde, and similar in features and build.

But as Jack digs deeper, he learns that they were all killed in the same manner, with a 9 mm handgun, and probably by the same guy.  Jack calls him "the boyfriend", but has difficulty finding information on the man's background.  As he follows the boyfriend across the country, he discovers a seriously disturbed and dangerous man who just may be Till's match.

Robert Dean has a deep, compelling reading voice, which is a good match for the suspenseful story, and more than once I found myself sitting in my driveway waiting for a chapter to end.


FTC Full Disclosure:  My thanks to Tantor Media and Edelweiss for the audio-download of the book.

Fact into Fiction: The Michigan Murders Connections

Guest post by mystery author Claudia Whitsitt

When I began writing The Wrong Guy five years ago, it was because the late 60s and early 70s had played such a profound role in my life. I attended Eastern Michigan University on the heels of the Michigan Murders, the brutal slayings of seven college coeds. John Norman Collins had been arrested, but the atmosphere was still one of uncertainty. As a young college freshman shot straight out of a protected parochial high school cannon into the “real” world, I was naïve, but smart enough to be just plain scared. What if the cops had the wrong guy behind bars?

Our house mother conducted meetings about the importance of using the buddy system whenever traveling on or off campus, and we were advised to carry mace on our key rings, wear whistles around our necks, and lace our keys through our fingers should we find ourselves in a life-threatening situation. Not the typical college experience.

I remember it like it was yesterday. The fear was palpable. What I didn’t realize then, and what I didn’t realize until after I’d written The Wrong Guy—fiction loosely based on these serial murders—was how deeply tied our community still remained to those murders, and how my writing the book would affect those who had lived through those times.

Since the book’s release, many people have spoken to me about their particular connections to the Michigan Murders. I’ve spoken to women who’d sat in front of Collins in college classrooms, played cards with him at their family’s kitchen table, heard stories about Collins warning women not to go out alone after dark, and offering to walk them home. I’ve spoken to someone whose family member discovered one of the girl’s bodies, and to another who attended the trial.

The most profound of all the connections I’ve made in writing the book is with the sister of the first victim. She and I are employed by the same school system. I had no idea that she worked there, and I don’t believe that she was aware that I was writing about the murders that so closely touched her family’s lives until the book was due for publication. When we finally learned of each other, we set up a meeting. It was tearful and touching. I had forged a connection I never intended in the writing of the book. Once I knew of her, I felt guilty for writing about the murders, for bringing her family’s pain to the surface yet again. Could I make something good come out of something so horribly agonizing?

As the victim’s sister told me, because Collins was ultimately only convicted of one of the crimes, her parents, now in their eighties, have lived without closure for the past forty-five years. August 7, 2012 marked the day that Mary Fleszar’s body was discovered in 1967. She was only nineteen years old. My heart goes out to all the victims and their families.

Have you written a story or book in which you unwittingly brought up painful memories for someone?

If, like me, you discovered that your work created a painful situation for someone else, how would you handle it?

Would you or have you ever changed the course of your writing because you knew your words would affect someone in a negative way?

The Wrong Guy, is available at Amazon in both print and e-book formats. Identity Issues, the first mystery in Claudia’s Issues series, is due out this fall. Claudia can be reached at her website.

Welcome back, Irene!

Disturbance by Jan Burke.*

Reviewed by Marlyn Beebe.

We last saw Irene Kelly in 2006's Kidnapped. She's finally back, and facing an old nemesis, Nick Parrish (to whom we were introduced eleven years ago in Bones). In the earlier novel, serial killer Parrish developed an obsession with Irene when he was temporarily allowed out of prison to lead a search for one of his victims. In this book, Parrish has recovered from the paralyzing injuries he sustained during his earlier escape attempt, thanks to an enterprising surgeon.

Although he's still incarcerated in a maximum security facility, Irene worries that Parrish will seek revenge. Despite friends' assurances of her safety, she's still afraid of the Moths, Parrish's rejuvenated online "fan club". She is certain they are the ones behind the terrifying "pranks" that occur when she's at home alone. But when the corpse of a young woman is found in the trunk of a car parked outside her house, the body painted with images of moths, Irene's suspicions are confirmed.

Meanwhile, the Las Piernas News Express is folding, and Irene has to find a way to keep from sitting around the house worrying about Parrish and the Moths.

Jan Burke's skill continues to increase with each novel she writes. Her characters are well-described and the plot is so gripping and suspenseful that this reviewer was forced to read through the night to finish the book.

One caveat: it does help to read the Irene Kelly books in sequence; the impact will be so much less otherwise.

Hop on over to Stuff and Nonsense, where I have a Q & A with Jan Burke! One lucky reader of Crime Fiction Collective and Stuff and Nonsense will receive a copy of Disturbance courtesy of the publisher. Please comment on any or all of the blogs by midnight on Saturday, June 18th to be entered in the contest.


*Many thanks to Simon & Schuster's Galley Grab program for the opportunity to review this book before publication.