by Chloe Hooper
“A Child’s Book of True Crime is a disturbing tale of violence, sex, self-interest, and the world children will inherit. It is also a stunning, literate, highly readable debut that combines a taut story and a unique structure . . . . It is [Hooper’s] prowess as a wordsmith, her understanding of narrative devices, and her keen grasp of human psychology that make the book so rewarding.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“A brilliant, seductive, and unnerving first novel of sexual betrayal and murder . . . Hooper’s novel is so tightly woven, so sophisticated, so full of sharp psychological truth and complex emotional and sexual life that you really have trouble believing it could be anyone’s first book.”
—Vince Passaro, O The Oprah Magazine
“A witty and unsettling meditation on innocence and experience.”
—The New Yorker
“Ironic, moving, full of keen perceptions and striking sentences . . . a tour de force.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“A striking, ambitious first novel . . . Hooper forces open her material so that it resonates beyond itself, and she does this with . . . curiosity and instinctive grace.”
—Jennifer Egan, The New York Times Book Review
“Hooper has already found a voice—smart, admirably discomfiting—that makes one eager to see what she’ll do next.”
—Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly
“A luscious novel . . . compelling.”
—The Boston Globe
“A charming, surreal bedtime story about disturbing sex, gruesome murder, and one woman’s attempt to escape into adulthood.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Its Hitchcockian flavor is sure to appeal to mystery lovers as well as those who prefer their love stories dark and dangerous.”
—USA Today
“Bless Australian author Chloe Hooper for fashioning a remarkable first novel that dispenses with typical hankie-wringing and finger-pointing and goes straight for the visceral response. A Child’s Book of True Crime teems with psychological nuance that tiptoes out to the razor’s edge with bristling vocabulary and spooky lyricism to match.”
—The Memphis Commercial Appeal
“Hooper’s wicked, sexy tale . . . proves she is a writer of great promise.”
—Publishers Weekly
“An affecting thriller that mixes just the right gothic chills with erotically charged suspense.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Utterly beguiling . . . a Russian doll of a book.”
—The Guardian
“Funny, edgy, and sparky as sherbet, Hooper’s novel lingers in the mind with all the sweetness and menace of childhood itself.”
—The Independent
“Dazzling . . . It would be difficult to point to a less sentimental lament to childhood’s innocence lost than Hooper’s chillingly original performance—and equally difficult to find one as engaging or bluntly moving.”
—The Irish Times
“It is difficult to believe that this clever, creepy tale is Chloe Hooper’s first novel . . . . Its originality and ambition make it a deeply impressive debut.”
—The Sunday Telegraph
“This book will win prizes. It will be made into a film. But most importantly, it will enthrall audiences worldwide. A true classic.”
—The Mirror
“Perhaps the greatest mystery about this dark, witty, deeply felt, suspenseful, and erotic tale is how someone as young as Chloe Hooper comes to know so much, to write so well, to show such command of prose, storytelling, and passion.”
—Judith Thurman, author of Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette
“Chloe Hooper is a novelist of undoubted power and remarkable literary skill.”
—Fay Weldon, author of The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1: A whimpering echoed underground
Chapter 2: Scouring every hidey-hole!
Chapter 3: Kitty spied the stainless steel instruments
Chapter 4: “That old pussycat’s seen it all”
Chapter 5: Missing is such a polite word
Chapter 6: All the old concerns flooded back
Chapter 7: Improvising with great aplomb
Chapter 8: “And what should I laugh at?”
Chapter 9: The bushland gang were watching over him
Acknowledgments
A Scribner Reading Group Guide
Author's Note
The Engagement Excerpt
About Chloe Hooper
For J & T
• MURDER AT BLACK SWAN POINT •
A whimpering echoed underground.
Along the cliff the duo traveled, the wind in their fur. Kitty Koala held her breath as she snuggled against Terence Tiger’s soft coat. Each giant boulder vibrated with alarm. Each tiny pebble quivered underfoot. Kangaroos bounding to the crime scene covered the eyes of their curious joeys, while overhead a flock of galahs streaked the sky a wild pink. When there was trouble at Black Swan Point, the bushland creatures were the first to know.
A crowd of animals had gathered in the driveway of the Siddells’ ramshackle cottage. No sooner had Terence arrived than the tiger pricked his sharp ears. From underground a whimpering echoed: “Boo-hoo-hoo!” Then, goodness! A little furry nose popped out of a burrow. “Why,” Kitty exclaimed, “it’s Wally Wombat!”
“Wally,” said Terence breathlessly. “Whatever has happened?”
“Oh dear!” sobbed the usually gruff wombat. “Poor Ellie Sid-dell . . .”
Terence raised an eyebrow.
“Well,” Wally murmured, slightly shamefaced, “I guess you’ve heard about her torrid personal life?”
Kitty blushed, wringing her paws. Ellie was a nurse at the local veterinary clinic, a fun-loving girl and strikingly pretty. But every local pet, recently vaccinated, had a story to tell about Ellie and the debonair vet. No matter that Graeme Harvey was married with three children—half the dogs in town returned from being fixed with some humiliating anecdote involving the couple’s lunch-hour exploits.
A tear rolled down Wally Wombat’s fur. “She was still a lovely girl, a lovely, gentle girl!”
Terence and Kitty glanced at each other. Rushing to the Siddells’ window, they peeked inside. “Turn away, Kitty!” implored the tiger. “Please don’t look!” Ellie’s room, with its blue rosebud wallpaper, bore evidence of a deadly struggle. The cosmetics covering her dressing table had been strewn sideways; an evening dress hung on the wardrobe door, horribly slashed. Why, even some small china ornaments on the windowsill—a turtle, a bunny, a kitten—were cracked, or shattered to dust.
Terence Tiger covered Kitty Koala’s eyes. He could hardly bear to look himself, yet somehow he managed. It was as if a wild—well, frankly—a wild animal had been at work here, the tiger thought. “Who could have done such a thing?” He stared across the horizon. At the bottom of the cliffs, black swans sang mournfully. The stately birds dipped their long necks in and out of the water, arching, straining: an ocean of question marks.
THE ROAD ALONG which Thomas and I were traveling was cut clear into a cliff face. Rude shadows of electricity poles and gum trees flashed across the windscreen. I lifted my skirt. Peeling off my panty hose, I examined new luminous veins running along the insides of my thighs. Thomas liked the way that primary-school teach
ers dress. Each morning, he claimed, teachers imagine what the children would like them to wear. “I have seen grown women in party frocks with ribbons in their hair.” A posse of Alices who took a wrong turn. As my hand crept higher, Thomas’s driving deteriorated. I concentrated on the scenery: the boulders could be tiny or like the buttressed walls of a cathedral. Some were very curvaceous, almost bulbous. “I spy a granite elephant complete with a trunk.” I giggled. With my little eye, rocks also formed shapes like mouths, like tongues, like pornographic things.
Opposite these Rorschach cliffs, a huge sign, the shape of a fat court jester, appeared in the driver-side window. The jester, in medieval dress and dark sunglasses, trumpeted cheap deals on color TVs and jacuzzis two kilometers up the road. As it happened, Thomas was also wearing sunglasses and as he turned, smiling at me, a picture of the duo lined up. Thomas, so handsome in his finely cut suit, was the first person you’d expect to be doing this. He was middle-aged, for a start, with his every feature perfectly symmetrical. He looked like a lawyer, and in fact he was a lawyer. And from his office he’d called the staff room during recess, confirming room service for lunch. “I’m going to rent a bed by the half hour,” he’d promised. “There’ll be peepholes in every wall, and a scoreboard outside the door.” He’d then left work early. Dumping his briefcase in the backseat, he’d driven out of Hobart—a city that still looked, from the top of Mt. Wellington, like a nineteenth-century oil painting. Sunlight soaked the clouds and purple hills soared in every direction. Hobart still looked like a triumphant oasis. And with his wife away publicizing her book, Thomas had left the city and sped toward the savages.
Laundry drying on a balcony railing now introduced the Sand and Waves Tudor Motel: a two-story slab of asbestos with exposed black beams. As a means of jazzing up the Tudor theme, each door had once been painted a different pastel color. Closing my eyes, I could almost smell the sheets. The pungency of fishermen’s orgies and mermaids gone bad. “We’ll rent a waterbed from some old seadog,” Thomas had said. “We’ll lock ourselves away, a musty Bible in the drawer in case it all goes horribly wrong.” A lawyer is as interested as any criminal in how to sideswipe a rule: this affair was to be kept away from the sentimental. We only met like this, Thomas kept reminding me, to alleviate boredom. I hooked my fingers around the elastic of my underpants, and turning from him, started to slowly wriggle free. A philosopher he admired proposed that facing the finality of death helped people make something of their lives.
“Leave on your heels,” Thomas suggested.
I took off one shoe and tried to slide the tiny underpants past my ankle. The trick was to act nonchalant, almost as if Thomas weren’t there. He slowed, sensing I had some problem. Under scrutiny, I finished the maneuver and folded my hands in my lap.
“Bravo.” Leaning over, laughing, Thomas kissed my neck. Another jester appeared, marking the driveway. Considering the motel’s signage, it would be too much to wear sunglasses checking in. He kissed my neck and we drove straight past.
“Are we there yet?”
“Kate, don’t pout.” He leaned harder on the accelerator. “I’ve been thinking about this all morning. I know exactly what I’m going to do to you.”
“I don’t mind that much if we just go back there.”
He paused. “We can do slightly better.”
I stared at the tiny piece of black cotton now lying by my feet. I’d waited for Thomas in a back lane, eavesdropping as the little girls on the other side of the fence conducted wedding ceremonies: “Do you promise to love him for the whole of your life? Okay, then you can throw away your flowers . . . Kiss! Now, it’s nine months later in the hospital. You play peekaboo.” The boys were elsewhere, pretending they could fart dangerous nuclear weapons. One of my students had just been reported for pulling down his pants, trying to “bomb” an old woman walking past the school gates. The day before I’d accompanied him to the principal’s office, and it made me awfully sad to see this scrawny kid, with barely anything which gave him pride, enter her room a bright-eyed hero, and leave again chastised and vengeful.
I opened my handbag, depositing my own stray underpants. “Was Veronica excited to be getting away?”
“Yes,” Thomas answered. “Thank you for inquiring.” Clearing his throat he added coolly, “Of course Lucien will miss her. Although I guess you’d know that as well as I would.”
I ignored him. “How is your wife’s book being received?”
“It’s selling well.”
Glossy copies of Murder at Black Swan Point, which detailed Ellie Siddell’s bizarre 1983 murder, lined the windows of all Tasmania’s bookstores. On the cover a row of swans swam in formation; all black but for one, which was bloodred. Then there was the title in white scrawl—after you mutilate someone, apparently, your handwriting turns to shit. It was supposed to look as if a psychopath, holding a piece of chalk in his fist, suddenly decided to scrape the title along a prison wall.
I stared out the window. In the book’s photos Ellie Siddell was a slightly awkward girl, always smiling. I’d grown up in Hobart with girls like Ellie. Girls hardwired to be sunny, even if they were cast out—at some crucial fourteen-year-old moment—for still being so immature. I imagined, later, when all the girls were seventeen and about to finish school, Ellie was mysteriously forgiven; and, more than that, deemed beloved by her former torturers for being so funny and dopey, for reacting to their teasing with a delayed, but full-blooming blush. Ellie, oddly drowsy, with a walk so languid, just before anyone realized a slow, sleepy walk might carry great appeal. She finished school badly and went to stay at her parents’ country house, to look after their horses. The vet offered her a part-time job, and her parents gave their approval. The vet was upstanding. They knew him and his wife; she came from an old family. And Ellie had always loved animals. She’d brought countless baby birds home, feeding them honey with an eyedropper. She’d constructed leaf hospital wards for ill caterpillars. Her parents hoped this job would be good for her confidence. Their big girl. Their big, sweet girl—Dr. Harvey would look after her. He would stand right behind her at the end of the day, taking her pretty hands in his and washing them carefully in the sink as Ellie giggled. Then he’d unbutton her blouse one button at a time, with wet fingers, before leading her into the reception area to lay her down on the couch.
• • •
“Put your shoes on, will you.” The car slowed again, and we drove through a high wrought-iron gate into a circular driveway. White gravel crunched under the tires; a flurry of pebbles rose like sea spray. I caught my breath. In front of us loomed a white mansion with a wide veranda. It had been built for Tasmanian gentlefolk in the 1870s, then converted to a luxury bed-and-breakfast a century later. The building was brimming with pride: a gingerbread house, iced lovingly, bordered by candy-boughed trees. If you tried to break off a little cornice to snack on you’d be scolded.
“It’s lovely.”
“Yes, it is,” said Thomas. “This is probably the most beautiful house in southern Tasmania.” He stared into the rearview mirror, clearly agitated. “We should hurry, there isn’t much time.”
While he parked the car around the back, I walked toward the reception area. Topiary love hearts may as well have grown by the door. Management may as well have hired a fiddler. Inside, the walls were painted a startling apricot. I cleared my throat. The receptionist, her blond hair in a neat bun, was also in her early twenties; she stood behind a sort of lectern.
“Do you have a double bed?” I asked efficiently. Of course, I hadn’t meant to ask that. I had meant to ask for a double room.
“Let me check.” She didn’t smile. “How long will you be wanting to stay?”
“We’re not absolutely . . . we’re just, just not absolutely sure.”
The Persian rug gave a slight electric shock. I glanced at the potpourri arranged in crystal dishes; the lace doily and single rose on each of the dining room’s tables. Then I turned. A three-legged cat was
dragging itself sideways up the black-wood staircase. The receptionist tapped her fountain pen against the register: the cat lifted its two front legs up a step, then hauled up the third leg. I could hear Thomas cautioning, “This is just a fuck.” But as the chandelier sent confetti light across the high-gloss walls, I wondered if his warnings were directed not to me, but to himself. The cat made its turnoff. And the receptionist, tapping her pen, noted that almost every room was vacant. She looked offended as she licked her finger, with its shiny buffed nail, and counted Thomas’s cash. “If your stay is cut short, if you don’t stay the night,” she enunciated carefully, “please leave the key on the desk.”
• • •
It took me a moment adjusting to all the Victoriana. I’d been imagining a motel room: mirrors with 3 A.M. pores, a notepad by the phone full of strangers’ doodles. Instead there was a spinning wheel in one corner and a four-poster bed. Whoever had decorated felt they understood wallpaper very intimately. Even the light switch was bordered with a lacy pattern, even the row of gilt picture frames. The frames, suspended with pink velvet ribbon, contained sepia photographs of children, all ringlets and rose-tinted cheeks, posing next to a penny-farthing bicycle, a rocking horse.
“Darling, it’s perfect,” Thomas said, grinning. He excused himself and disappeared through the door stenciled in sweeping cursive: Lavatory. When I was alone, I walked over to the dried flower arrangement. Above the brittle petals was a mirror, with a short young woman inside its frame. She looked like she’d broken into her mother’s makeup case, trying to make her eyes more almond-shaped. Someone had shown her a curling wand and her dark hair was tousled expertly on one side, but the other—where she’d practiced—lay flat. Behind the flowers, like the consolation prize, hid a plastic kettle, coffee sachets, and a mini-packet of cookies. Opening up the cellophane wrapping, I stuffed both the cream-centered biscuits in my mouth. I could hear Thomas whistling. He whistled well.