- This edition an e-book on Kindle (Amazon)
- ASIN : B0DHHJJSTX
- Publisher : Hachette Australia (February 26, 2025)
- Print length : 216 pages
Synopsis (Amazon)
That afternoon, when the police and then my mother finally arrived, they found me sitting beside Marlowe holding her hand and talking to her: about a boy I had a crush on, about the buttery yellow jumpsuit I had seen in a shop window that would look perfect on her; about those two cups of half-drunk coffee sitting on the table. Who was with you, Marlowe?
In March of 1989, Emmerson Kerr is alone.
One morning listening to her Walkman, a newsreader's words stop her dead. 'A warning to our listeners that this story is graphic in nature. The body of an 84-year-old woman has been found in the foyer of her apartment building on Sydney's lower North Shore ... '
Emmerson stood, held in place like an anchor, like a nail in wood, like the breath of a frightened woman alone in her home. She listened to the details and remembered back to that day, twelve years before, in her grandmother's Paddington studio. The 1977 murder of Marlowe Kerr - Sydney's art darling and socialite, a woman known for her lavish parties and her world-famous designs, but known to Emmerson as her colourful, loving grandmother - never solved.
And now, years later, a terrifying string of crimes against older women will begin, will force ageing female residents to lock themselves inside their homes. They will be in a state of constant fear. And, as the killer's reign of terror escalates, and Emmerson starts to unearth her beloved grandmother's shady past, she becomes increasingly convinced that the same person who killed Marlowe is also responsible for the depravity that is now unfolding in the city she has always called home.
Could Emmerson be the link to solving Marlowe's murder and help catch the killer before they kill again?
Taut, chilling and unforgettable, The Thrill of It explores the mind of a killer and the power of a granddaughter's love. A masterful and explosive crime novel by Stella Prize longlisted and critically acclaimed author Mandy Beaumont.
My Take
The author notes
"THE THRILL OF IT is a work of fiction. It is inspired and informed by the real-life brutal slayings of six older women on Sydney's North Shore between 1989 and 1990.."
While the auhor has attempted to fictionalise the story with the creation of the central character Emmerson, the granddaughter of an earlier victim of the same killer, it doesn't feel really successful. It feels as if it is really a thinly disguised "real-crime" account, a little too close to the bare bones of the original story. Nevertheless there is an attempt to analyse the motives of the killer and a feeling of suspense as he approaches his final victim.
My rating: 4.4
About the author
Mandy is an award-winning writer, academic and book reviewer living in Melbourne, Australia. Her critically acclaimed debut novel The Furies is out now (Hachette), and her collection of short stories, Wild, Fearless Chests (Hachette), was shortlisted for many awards, notably the Richell Prize and the Dorothy Hewett Award, and a story from the collection won the MOTH International Short Story Award. She teaches at Griffith University in Creative Writing and a creative writing researcher at RMIT who is concerned with the reading and writing philosophically engaged fiction through both a creative and critical discourse with existential phenomenologist and feminist Simone de Beauvoir.
No comments:
Post a Comment