Though Kukafka looks about 17 years old in the author photo on this book, she has a pretty good grip on the human condition, particularly the awkward, endless days of adolescence, filled with small horrors. No one in this slow burning murder mystery is all good or all bad and the writing is beautifully cliche-free. The small town murder victim, Lucinda, is the typical stuff of male adolescent fantasies but she has her own secrets. An obvious suspect in the murder inquiry is Cameron, who spends many nights staring into Lucinda’s bedroom from the darkness of her garden. He obviously has problems but is he a creep, or just a misguided innocent? And Russ, the cop, living with a malady of regrets and a wife he barely knows, is also hard to define. The unlikely hero is Jade, utterly dark in her outlook, overweight and acned, nobody’s idea of a teenage dream but more capable of kindness and honesty than anybody else around her. I am not totally convinced by this novel – I don’t think the character of Russ quite works- but it is vivid and original and worth a read.
