by Eliza Clark
First published 2024
Joan Wilson burns to death on a Yorkshire beach. Three schoolgirls from her school set her on fire in a seaside town already falling apart. Nearly ten years later, journalist Alec Z. Carelli decides to tell the complete story. He interviews witnesses and family members for hours. He digs through historical records. Most importantly, he exchanges letters with the killers themselves. Carelli builds his account piece by piece, revealing how the murder shattered lives and left the town reeling. But his investigation raises a troubling question: how much of what he discovers actually happened? The story becomes a mirror reflecting our hunger for true crime and the media that feeds it. Clark examines gender, class, and power through this lens of violence. She exposes how we consume tragedy and what that consumption reveals about human nature's darkest impulses.
Genres: literary-fiction, mystery, crime, contemporary
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Yorkshire, Seaside Town
Period: Nearly Ten Years Later
434 pages · Paperback · Faber and Faber
Content warnings: death, violence