#BookReview ‘Girl,11’ by Amy Suiter Clarke

Psychological Thriller

About the book…

Full of adrenaline-inducing twists and emotional nuance, Girl, 11 is a heart stopping suspense novel where the detective is a podcaster. For fans of Ruth Ware and Eva Dolan.

VIGILANTE

True crime podcaster Elle Castillo has long been obsessed with The Countdown Killer.

VICTIMS

Twenty years ago, he went on a killing spree. Each new victim was a year younger than the last.

VENGEANCE

Now, he’s back.

Elle must stop the deadly countdown before the killer can claim his next victim.

Thank you so much to Pushkin Press for approving my request to read ‘Girl,11’, the debut novel by Amy Suiter Clarke which is published in paperback on June 3rd .

Elle is the investigative journalist who writes and records the podcast,Justice Delayed.

Created and started after her own career with the CPS(Child Protection Service) went awry, she tackles cases looking for closure and justice for the victims.

However, in the course of her obsession with the Countdown Killer(TCK) something untoward has been revealed. And, before Elle can pull the tangled threads of a decades long investigation into their component parts, danger is on her doorstep. And a killer is stalking the ones she loves…

This is a brilliant, insightful thriller which examines the personal, and social responsibility of those who put their thoughts, opinions and passions out into the public arena.

Elle’s passion for seeing the scales of justice balanced are driven by her background in child protection as well as finely tuned moral compass-she is not a podcast host out of boredom, or grim fascination with gruesome crimes, she wants restorative justice for the families affected and to return their family to them rather than having them known as ‘Victim X’.

In the TCK case, girls were being abducted in pairs, the first aged 20,kept for 7 days, hidden at an unknown location and then poisoned with berries. They were placed so as to be publicly found, a monument to the killer’s ingenuity. He set a clock ticking with the first abduction, took another girl 3 days later and kills the first on the 7th day. The only reason he appears to have stopped, is due to losing Girl 11, the only one who managed to escape his clutches.

A burnt out cabin appears to be the final resting place of TCK and partner, the murders stopped, Girl 11 changed her identity and went undercover, never to be found again.

Until now.

TCK is the next case Elle has decided to take on, despite the advice not to from her husband, her best friend and neighbour, Sash, and her police detective contact, Ayaan.

Before long, a girl has gone missing.

11 years old, taken in broad daylight, and with strong resemblances to TCK cases. But is this a copycat who has taken all the details from Elle’s podcast? Did the police close the case too quickly on the flimsiest of evidence decades earlier?

How it feels to have possibly inspired a copycat killer is so equisitely detailed, you can really feel the distress Elle is going through, especially as the book comprises transcripts from her podcast episodes, alternated with scenes from Elle’s life.

The intimacy evoked from seeing Elle and Martin in their natural environment, compared to the professional, no nonsense presentation of Justice Delayed creates an epistolary effect, and builds the tension up beautifully between past and present. A strong representation of the victims as people, not numbers, counter balances the way that modern culture categorises killers so casually by the number of victims they claim.

I doubt there are many reading this who don’t know the way that a serial killer is categorised, as opposed to a spree killer.

But how many can name a victim of the Yorkshire Ripper?

At present, I am only just dipping my toes into the podcast arena, and true crime features largely in this landscape. Atlanta Monster, and more recently, The Ripper, on Netflix, really opened my eyes not only to the way in which crimes are reported, but how the victims get removed from them. In this book, Girl,11, focuses on retrieving the identity of these victims, remembering who and what they were, and returning them to their family and loved ones. It is a responsibility we need to bear in mind when talking, writing and reading about cases which fascinate the public by their psychology, such they are are still talked about decades later.

The Yorkshire Ripper is one that sticks in my mind as when he recently died, he was given an obituary in a national newspaper. He did not deserve that. A better way of remembering the appalling circumstances which allowed him to freely kill, is keeping the names of the women close, remembering these were mothers of children, and they were not protected by the public offices which were there to do so.

Read ‘Somebody’s Mother,Somebody’s Daughter’ by Carol Ann Lee instead.

Girl,11 is a wonderfully engaging debut novel which looks at the way we frame victims of violence, especially women and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

About the author…

Amy Suiter Clarke is a writer and communications specialist. Originally from a small town in Minnesota, she completed an undergraduate in theater in the Twin Cities.