A Child’s Book of True Crime
This book by Australian author Chloe Hooper started out relatively interestingly: a little story with a talking wombat and koala. Then we segue to schoolteacher Kate Byrne and Thomas Marne, the father of one of her students, in a car on the way to an afternoon tryst in a B&B. Thomas’ wife is a crime writer whose latest book is about the 1983 murder of Ellie Siddell. (Siddell was understood to be murdered by the wife of her lover. The wife’s car was found near a cliff and it was believed that she had thrown herself off it, after committing the murder.) Kate becomes obsessed with the Siddell murder, to the point that she believes she will suffer the same fate as the young girl who took a married man as her lover.
Kate is a rather odd character. There’s this childlike innocence to her, and there’s something intriguing and also rather offputting about her. I ended up disliking her – and I already couldn’t stand the rather pompous Thomas right from the beginning. So character-wise, there wasn’t anyone I felt anything for, except perhaps for Thomas and Veronica’s son Lucien, who is obviously affected by his parents’ marriage and his mother’s job. So for me, the book faltered around the 2/3 mark. The adjoining story told by the bush animals as they investigate the Siddell murder is quite charming, and I think redeems this book whenever it appears. But that wasn’t enough to do it for me. The writing had its some pretty good moments and this being Hooper’s first book, I’m willing enough to see what the rest of her books are like, especially since her other book, Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island sounds like a rather interesting book.
