Right from the opening, there’s a delicious ambiguity to this psychological thriller about a serial killer in Perth’s beachside suburbs. Who is the predator? Who is the prey? It can’t be called a whodunnit, either. The suspect, Neil Fraser Lock, is named right at the start. This is more of a did-he-do-it. (And, if not, who did?)
At the beginning of The Shark, the bodies of three young women – all swimmers – have been discovered on beaches with injuries similar to a shark attack. One girl disappeared and no body was found. That’s Piper, the girlfriend of Raych, who narrates part of this novel in a distinctive voice, with compelling hooks for the reader. Raych had unravelled after Piper’s disappearance and spent three days in a psych ward with Carmen.
Carmen is the focus of other chapters. There are enough gaps in her memory, along with secrets she keeps from the narrative, to make the reader question her actions. With the police investigation at a standstill, the two girls team up to capture Lock and soon have him trussed up in a garage, but they have vastly different agendas. Raych wants to know about Piper; Carmen wants to know what she did in her sister Alexis’s room on ‘that night’ when Lock was also in the room. While they have him in the garage another girl disappears. Raych discovers that the girl is Carmen’s sister. Have they made a terrible mistake … and can Raych now trust Carmen?
The narrative explodes into a twisted, high-energy finale, where the girls confront both the killer and their own psyches. Unsettling and brilliant.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
Read a review of No Country for Girls here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emma Styles writes contemporary Australian noir about young women taking on the patriarchy. She grew up on Whadjuk Noongar country in Perth, Western Australia and now lives in London where she was born. Emma loves a road trip and once sat out a cyclone on the north west coast of WA in a LandCruiser Troop Carrier. She is less afraid of great white sharks than she should be, and hopeless at surfing.
Emma has an MA in crime fiction from the University of East Anglia. No Country for Girls is her debut novel; it won the Little, Brown UEA Crime Fiction Award 2020. The Shark is her second novel.
Visit Emma Styles’ website here.
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