On a beach in a run-down seaside town on the Yorkshire coastline, sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson is set on fire by three other schoolgirls. Nearly a decade after the horrifying murder, journalist Alec Z. Carelli has written the definitive account of the crime, drawn from hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and most notably, correspondence with the killers themselves. The result is a riveting snapshot of lives rocked by tragedy, and a town left in turmoil. But how much of the story is true?
As in much true crime, the reader discovers and filters information about the case almost simultaneously with Alec. Clark is also very clever with pastiche, and we get snippets of Alec’s transcripts and interviews, news stories from the time of the crime.
A work of show-stopping formal mastery and penetrating intelligence ... A bravura exercise in mimicry, pitch-perfect whether it’s ventriloquising journalism ... [A] formidable talent.
