Publishers Weekly
06/10/2024
In these eerie and insightful linked stories, McFarlane (The Sun Walks Down) explores a serial killer’s rampage and its impact on an Australian community. The volume opens with “Tourists,” which takes place in 2005, nearly a decade after the killings that have since made Barrow a tourist destination for true crime fanatics. There, a local woman tells a coworker she can sense the presence of a victim whose body is yet to be discovered. McFarlane then rewinds to 1996 with “Hunter on the Highway,” when hitchhikers are turning up dead and the killer is at large, prompting a young woman to wonder if her boyfriend is the culprit. In “Democracy Sausage,” set in 1998, a political candidate’s chances for victory are dashed because he shares the surname of the man recently charged with the killings, taxi driver Paul Biga. Media coverage of the case gets further explored in “Fat Suit,” about an actor made up to look like the corpulent Biga for a salacious 2024 biopic. McFarlane beautifully renders the ways in which news of the crimes warps some of her cast’s relationships and causes other characters to slip into obsession. It’s a standout meditation on a community’s legacy of violence. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Susanna Lea Assoc. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
Advance Praise
“McFarlane is a master at just about everything: dialogue, setting, comic timing . . . But her biggest accomplishment is creating an empathic bond with people whose lives are touched by unexplainable violence . . . McFarlane sets them off on journeys that are compulsively suspenseful and enormously readable.”
—Mary Ann Gwinn, Los Angeles Times
“[A] smart, deeply moving collection . . . Readers may be tempted to hazard an opinion of who and what the killer is from the perspectives his ancestors, neighbors, the media, groupies, even the tangentially involved, offer, but in the end it is their stories—of loss, obsession and brokenness—that linger.”
—Paula L. Woods, Los Angeles Times
“Each story . . . stands alone beautifully. Woven together, they illustrate the long-reaching, often unexpected ripple effects evil has on every life it touches.”
—Jane Harper, Booklist
“However entertaining, McFarlane’s stories continually remind readers that behind true-crime stories’ escapist pleasure exist real death and human pain. Addictively engaging, profoundly serious fiction from an underappreciated master.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Eerie and insightful . . . McFarlane beautifully renders the ways in which news of the crimes warps some of her cast’s relationships and causes other characters to slip into obsession. It’s a standout meditation on a community’s legacy of violence.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
“This Möbius strip of linked stories bends and twists the crime genre until it is barely recognisable . . . The result is a riveting study of human nature.”
—Geraldine Brooks, author of Horse
“These sublime stories have the poise and clarity of classics. As Fiona McFarlane’s characters edge towards revelation or disaster, her artistry shines on every page.”
—Michelle de Kretser, author of Scary Monsters
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2024-06-15
McFarlane contemplates the ripple effects of violent crime in 12 intricately layered stories based on an actual string of serial killings in 1990s Australia.
The diverse stories travel across decades and continents. The criminal investigation never becomes the central plot; the killer himself, here called Paul Biga, remains offstage while his victims appear only in fleeting mentions or glimpses. The protagonists’ connections to the crimes range from close to barely tangential. Timing matters, one story traveling back to 1950, when Biga’s future mother is 8 years old, another heading forward to a 2028 true-crime podcast. The opening story introduces the crimes’ physical reality, following a reluctant visitor to the forest where Biga’s victims had been found years earlier and where a sense of evil, and sexual, possibility still pervades. In 2003, an elderly woman’s lingering shame over her adolescent love for another girl resonates more powerfully than her more recent memories of Biga as her neighbor. Secret sexuality permeates characters’ lives, as does paranoia. Readers share a young woman’s growing fear in 1996 as she follows news reports that reveal a disquieting number of traits her boyfriend shares with an unidentified killer on the lam. Is it protective or paranoid maternal instinct pushing another woman to warn her younger sister against marrying a vaguely creepy boyfriend a decade earlier, in 1986? McFarlane uses the adventures of British schoolgirls in 1995 Rome to create misleading fear and tension before revealing a character who symbolizes resilience in the book. The travails of a politician unfortunately named Biga running for office four days after Paul Biga’s arrest offers discomforting comic relief. Given the large role media influence plays throughout, inevitably a television series about Biga shows up in 2024. So does Covid-19 in 2020, putting into perspective a single serial killer’s insignificance in a world reeling with global crises. However entertaining, McFarlane’s stories continually remind readers that behind true-crime stories’ escapist pleasure exist real death and human pain.
Addictively engaging, profoundly serious fiction from an underappreciated master.
