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There are repeated pokes at the nature of true crime, particularly the journalist who admits to feeling like ‘a creep’ when asking people for interviews. ‘Carelli used the shared experience of losing our children to throw me off guard and harvest my content,’ says one regretful interviewee. But Clark shows the way in which things have moved on from Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer. Now some of those who are written about can have a stronger voice than journalists, and if they get their message out there things can turn – as it does for Carelli when his story is scrutinised by those in it, prompting a Guardian journalist to ask him: ‘You’ve referred repeatedly to “emotional truth” – can you define that for me? What does that mean?’
For the most part, Clark avoids social media’s simplistic division of people into goodies and baddies. Instead, she describes characters’ thoughts and behaviour in ways that feel uncomfortably realistic, particularly the teenagers who grapple with shifts of power in their relationships. Who has it? Why do I not have it? The darkness in our brains is also confronted. Playing Sims 4, one character, Violet, locks a Sim teenage girl in a basement and keeps her there. She then introduces a Sim boy, and the pair have babies who are also locked in the basement: ‘Violet considered downloading a mod to enable incestuous relationships.’
People are drawn to that darkness in true crime, and Clark has simulated it well enough that readers will likely google fictional places on real maps. Importantly, nobody was harmed in the making of this book. There will be no upset loved ones –except perhaps those who were affected by some of the true crimes mentioned. The truth about these was probably needed to give depth to the illusion. Still, it is almost ethical true crime. For true crime fans who are not drawn to crime fiction it is a good vegan burger: good enough that there is no need to chop up a real carcass.
Because you read about crime fiction
Also by Andrew Hankinson
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