When twelve-year-old Esther disappears on the way home from school in a small town in rural Australia, the community is thrown into a maelstrom of suspicion and grief. As Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels arrives in town during the hottest spring in decades and begins her investigation, Esther’s tenacious best friend, Ronnie, is determined to find Esther and bring her home.
The novel’s overall narrative is written from a variety of perspectives, allowing the story to unfold organically through the insights of the main players ... But what stands out the most is the use of the chorus in chapters told by the town’s children, the collective 'we' whose voices are conspicuously absent from grown-up conversations, but whose insights provide an unbiased clarity ... The way that Scrivenor explores the bad things that happen to children through their own eyes elevates the entire novel. It’s a literary device that echoes not only the Greek chorus but writers from the contemporary canon, like Jeffrey Eugenides’ adolescent chorus in The Virgin Suicides. Here, it gives Scrivenor the opportunity to show the contradictory experiences and thoughts of children – not the same, but so often swept collectively under the rug ... This excitable chorus, who see everything even before it is revealed through the investigation, are the same and not the same, their experiences shared but different. Their emotional distance from the sometimes harrowing events in the story makes space for the reader’s own emotional response, rather than a prescribed catharsis ... While Esther is an ideal victim, Scrivenor’s suspects are far more complex ... The ending, although slightly too drawn out, asks questions about friendship, family and forgiveness that are deeply discomfiting ... an intelligent novel, one that grapples with complex social and political dynamics, and brings a fresh voice to familiar narratives.
... less a tale of murder most horrid than a study in quiet, everyday violence: vicarious trauma, coercive control, victim-blaming, internalized shame. It’s a novel of sharp-edged tempers, accidents waiting to happen and dark inheritances ... It’s easy to conjure a boogeyman, Scrivenor shows, but it’s those who know and love us who are most likely to hurt us. In a country where a woman a week is murdered by a current or former partner, that lesson still seems terrifyingly necessary.
Scrivenor’s stunning debut blends a taut psychological thriller with a suspenseful police procedural ... Scrivenor does a superb job laying out Sarah and Wayne’s backgrounds and their working relationship as the well-crafted plot builds to a powerful conclusion. Fans of Liane Moriarty and Jane Harper won’t want to miss this page-turner.
