Title: GIRL,11
Author: Amy Suiter Clarke
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Read: June 2021
Expected publication: out now
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟.25
Book Description:
Once a social worker specializing in
kids who were the victims of violent crime, Elle Castillo is now the host of a
popular true crime podcast that tackles cold cases of missing children in her
hometown of the Twin Cities. After two seasons of successfully solving cases,
Elle decides to tackle her white whale—The Countdown Killer. Twenty years ago,
TCK abruptly stopped after establishing a pattern of taking and ritualistically
murdering three girls over seven days, each a year younger than the last. No one’s
ever known why—why he stopped with his eleventh victim, a girl of eleven years
old, or why he followed the ritual at all.
When a listener phones in with a tip, Elle sets out to interview him, only to
discover his dead body. And within days, a child is abducted following the
original TCK MO. Unlike the experts in the media and law enforcement who have
always spun theories of a guilty suicide, Elle never believed TCK had died, and
her investigation was meant to lay that suspicion to rest. But instead, her
podcast seems to be kicking up new victims.
What attracted me to this book:
I love mysteries that feature
different ways of storytelling, and the book-within-a-book or
podcast-within-a-book are two of my favourites. There is so much potential here
to drive the story along at a good pace and introduce peripheral characters
whose use is primarily to provide information. As soon as I heard that GIRL, 11
features a true crime podcast, I knew I had to read it.
My musings:
Cold cases hold a special fascination for the
public – a killer who has never been found is a killer who is still out there,
potentially still posing a danger to innocent people. And everyone likes to see
justice being done, not someone getting away with murder (quite literally). Which
are two of the reasons that attract me to the theme of cold-case
investigations. In GIRL, 11, we have a particularly nasty serial killer, one
who targets children. He is also meticulous in his planning and the execution
of his crimes, which has seen him evade law enforcement for over twenty years.
Elle, a social worker who specialises in children who have been the victims of
violent crime, has targeted The Countdown Killer (TCK) in her true crime
podcast in an effort of unearthing more witnesses and evidence that could lead
to his capture. But then a listener who calls Elle with information suddenly
winds up dead and the stakes become a lot higher still...
Let me start by saying that I
absolutely loved the podcast elements in this book, which were brilliantly
done. Even though we cannot hear the music scores, special sound effects and
voiceovers in the podcast, nor are we able to see or hear all the characters
involved, the author has written the podcast chapters in a way that brought it
to life for me. I felt as if I was tuning in, and I was excited to come along
for the ride!
It’s hard to put my fingers on
reasons why the rest of the story didn’t grab me as much as I would have liked,
but I will try:
*) Elle herself was the sort of
character who should be able to drive this particular story well, and yet I
never really fully connected to her. It’s not because she is holding things
back from the reader (I do love a good unreliable narrator), but something just
didn’t click between us. I think I would have preferred Elle to live in a share
house, be down on her luck and recording her podcast in the basement than this
uber-confident “I am a brilliant investigator” type person who preaches quite a
few times about current affairs topics that weren’t part of the story.
*) I’m never very fond of chapters
written from the perspective of the killer (with the exception of THE NOTHING
MAN by Catherine Ryan Howard) because often they turn out to be stereotypes or
give away too much. As soon as the killer’s POV made an appearance, the story
became predictable for me and totally lost steam. TBH, the mix between trying
to make us feel empathy for the killer because of his traumatic childhood on
one hand, and asking us not to give the killer any attention for his crimes was
odd.
*) Characters that were just a bit
too “convenient”. The perfect medical examiner husband who has all the facts of
the recent murders at hand to share with Elle. The police chief friend, who
invites civilian Elle to be part of the investigation. The modern single mum
career-woman friend whose ten-year-old-going-on-forty daughter is of course so
much tougher and smarter than most of her peers. I can’t really put a finger on
why these bothered me so much, but all together they didn’t ring true to me. Some
side characters almost seemed like “token” characters to me to add diversity.
I think that with a bit of tweaking
and editing out of information that didn’t add all that much to the story, the
book would have moved at a faster pace and kept my interest for longer. As it
was, I eagerly devoured the podcast chapters but almost groaned every time TCK
made an appearance.
Summary:
GIRL, 11 will appeal to readers who enjoy the use
of different story elements in a thriller, in this case episodes of a true
crime podcast. The author really brought the podcast elements to life with the
use of snappy dialogue and descriptions of other effects used to garner the
audience’s attention. And whilst some of the other story elements dragged a
little for me, the overall mystery was intriguing enough to keep reading.
Thank
you to Netgalley and Pushkin Press for the free electronic copy of this novel and
for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.
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