Gwen Moffat lives in Cumbria. Her novels are set in remote communities ranging from the Hebrides to the American West. The crimes fit their environment, swelling that dreadful record of sin in the smiling countryside cited by Sherlock Holmes.
“If I tell worse will happen”.
Right from that strap and the opening with a young girl being interviewed by Specialist Victims cops you know that this is another one focused on paedophilia but if you think that you’ve seen (read) it all there are surprises ahead: this one is going to hurt.
The special cops, Laura and Niamh, have to prise her story out of Jenny who, at fourteen, was found, bloody, traumatized and mute, in a leafy Dublin suburb.
The tale is told from the points of view of these three characters: Laura, perceptive, careful but haunted by her own past; Niamh: rough and splendid, watchful of her partner’s disintegration under the pressures of a demanding toddler at home, and the hideous drama being played out before them in a psychiatric hospital. And Jenny herself, who speaks at last but only to retreat into fantasy, spinning the grimmest of fairy stories, filling the gaps between known facts.
It is those facts that demand a need for urgency for, close to where Jenny was found, there was a crashed BMW registered to her stepfather. Her mother and small brother were inside and critically injured but the stepfather was missing. Jenny had been in the car too but although covered with blood she had no injuries from the crash. Despite that, a forensics examination found evidence of abuse, ancient, current, sexual, and very recent rape.
In the interview room Jenny’s fantasy grows more elaborate. As a wise owl tries to protect the beautiful princess and her little mouse from the evil prince, the owl’s soldiers become more prominent: “soldiers” now identified as the rack of knives in her family’s kitchen. The steak knife she carries in the pouch of her hoodie.
The authorities see Jenny as a suspect. Is she a killer or covering for her mother? Or is the bastard still alive and looking for his family?
It’s a cliff hanger yet the action flows effortlessly towards what has to be its inevitable conclusion. This is Perdue’s debut adult novel and as a novel it is faultless. But it is more than a work of fiction; it’s an interpretation of reality: thought-provoking, awe-inspiring, and a wake-up call.
