From HMP Dungeness Anjelica Fry protests her innocence: she didn’t kill the father of her baby – Karl Savage. Neither did she set his Dalston flat on fire. But all the evidence points at her.
Two years after her daughter Lissa went missing, Morgan Vine takes on a case that is riddled with depravity and vindictiveness. In the wake of her best-selling book on a miscarriage of justice, the kick-ass investigative journalist is in two minds whether to trust Anjelica, but is piqued by minutiae details in her account of events. Little does she realise that the case still has a touch of Lissa in it - but only darker.
In the second instalment of a Morgan Vine Thriller, Kill Me Twice ‘whips’ its readers up from the onset - opening with an attack on a mother and daughter who are having a walk round a cliff. He gets better; having moved on from filling in readers with lengthy prose about his heroine’s background, he instead feeds them with drip-narratives concerning the depth of Lissa’s involvement in her mother’s case.
Meanwhile, Morgan needs to explore all avenues to confirm that Anjelica’s has indeed been framed for murder and Savage is in fact a dead man walking. Although the police found his body and Savage was identified by his dental record. Traces of liquid in the empty petrol canister found in Anjelica’s car is the same as the one retrieved from Savage’s burnt-down flat. And her DNA is on a certain Spaniard brand of matches found at the crime scene.
Booker is curt and furious in depicting Savage 'the demise'; in interspersing chapters Booker paints the making of a sociopath in him. Yet he also portrays the still fragile Morgan living in the long shadow of her teen trauma and her struggle as a single mother.
An old hand in dealing with suspense, Booker’s balancing act for vicious twists and keeping the lid tightly screwed on until the penultimate ending, is outstanding. His adrenaline-pumping narratives follow the topsy-turvy turn of events through Morgan’s viewpoint in another extraordinary cliffhanger encore. Also, despite being a pantser in her investigation, Morgan then emerges as Savage’s Nemesis.
The Whistler is a regular fixture these days. Weekends only. Seemed an OK bloke, at first. Cooked a nice beef stew, brought it down to the cellar. Watched Karl eat every morsel.
-Nice?
-Not bad. Thanks.
A grin.
-You know it was dog food, right?
-Seriously?
-Yeah. And stop snivelling. Boys don’t cry. Your dad sounds like a right poof. We’ve got to toughen you up, kiddo. You need to learn to take a joke.
Karl shudders, trying to banish the memory of the dog food.
He’s doing his best to forget the game too. The one The Whistler makes him play when he comes down into the cellar at night, while he’s sleeping.
-Our special game.
Another shudder.
Kill Me Twice can easily tick all boxes for a perfect crime perusal; Booker’s plot is watertight and his plain but striking words are effective. The crisscrossing of characters is smartly done but not over the top; his minor characters fit well like the cogs running smoothly in an engine with their distinguished voices.
One thing.
The risk-calculated Savage, being brought forward gradually, a survivor of systematic child abuse who manages to break free and end the tortures. No doubt his terrible experiences have hardened him added to what Anjelica has recalled to Morgan as his abandonment issues. On the surface nonetheless he’s imbued with an unusual charm that draws women into his trap.
On the one hand, Booker has created a sound killer with an extreme anger about his past that lingers. Savage’s gruesome acts are plausible, enforcing the adage that violence bears greater violence. Besides, the variations of Savage’s characters spread in many crime novels. On the other hand, would every orphan with a cruel mother end as a murderer? If anything, there is Oliver Twist, Anne of Green Gables and Harry Potter, too.
How different would it be had Karl Savage been a spoilt upper-class child like Holden Caufield? How had his interest in older women evolved - like Morgan - and his entrapment for her? Perhaps in crime fiction, however, the pull towards the likes of Hannibal and Lord Voldermort are inevitable. Alas, it’s a disappointment. Once more, the known stereotype -the messed-up orphan- is being reinforced.
Be that as it may, the curtains fall leaving Morgan to ponder over her biggest dilemma of how she can keep Lissa.
Thank you to Simon Booker for the review copy.
Follow Simon on Twitter: @simonbooker
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