A recommendation from Erin Kelly on the cover of any book is enough to make me buy it, and this one was money well spent. It’s about a young man who shoots and kills thirteen women on a college campus in Scotland, and about the police and families trying to pick up the pieces afterwards. It’s also a devastating portrait of the intrusiveness of the modern media, how their presence and persistence adds to the already excessive stress on police and victims’ families. I sincerely hope journalists like Grant Lockley are entirely fictional but suspect they are not. He’s one of the most loathesome characters I’ve encountered in many years, and all too believable.
The beauty of this book though is that all the characters are real, and credible. I want more of them; I want to continue on their journeys with them. That this is the first crime novel from Claire Askew is a surprise; it’s so assured, intelligent and compelling. Hope she hurries up and writes more.
