Review: GIRL, 11, Amy Suiter Clarke

• 
  This edition made available as an e-book on Libby by my local library
  
• 352pp
• Text Publishing publication date: 4 May 2021
• ISBN: 9781922330499

Synopsis (author)

Former child social worker Elle Castillo now hosts a popular true crime podcast investigating cold cases of missing and abducted children. After four seasons of successfully solving cases in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, Elle decides to tackle her white whale: The Countdown Killer. Twenty years ago, TCK terrorized the community by kidnapping and ritualistically murdering three girls over seven days, each a year younger than the last. But after he took his eleven-year-old victim, the pattern—and the murders—abruptly stopped.

When Elle follows up on a listener email only to discover the tipster’s dead body, she feels responsible. Within days, a young girl is abducted, and the crime seems to fit the TCK sequence halted decades before. While media and law enforcement long ago concluded that TCK was dead, Elle has never believed it. She had hoped her investigation would uncover his identity, but instead, her podcast seems to be inciting new murders.

My Take

Elle Castillo's podcast Justice Delayed  has a following of several hundred thousand. She basically deals with cold cases and has been succesful in solving a number of them. The case she has decided to focus on in her fifth year of production is over twenty years old. After a number of murders in which the female victims become progressively younger, TCK suddenly stopped when he had taken an 11 year old victim.

Now, in response to Elle's podcast, he appears to have started up again. Listeners often contact Elle with information, but this time she arrives to find her informant has been killed.

The story features a number of voices. The transcript of the podcast has Elle asking questions of people related to the topic, interspersed with voiceovers from Elle explaining her thoughts. The transcripts are interspersed with descriptions of what Elle is doing in response to tips. The effect is to build tension. Each section is dated and that provides challenges to the reader too as the chapters are not sequential. The effects of the podcast though is that her listeners learn new information almost as quickly as Elle does.

Elle reveals a lot about her back ground, what motivates her to produce the podcasts, and then ultimately she reveals her true identity.

A well constructed and powerful debut novel.

My rating: 4.7

About the author

Amy Suiter Clarke is the author of psychological thrillers GIRL, 11 and LAY YOUR BODY DOWN. Originally from a small town in Minnesota, she completed a BA in theater in the Twin Cities then earned an MFA in Creative Writing with Publishing at Kingston University in London. She currently lives in Melbourne, Australia. Her debut novel Girl, 11 has been translated into twelve languages and published in fifteen territories around the world.