Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Wilding debuts with a wickedly clever feminist thriller about the murder of a corrupt womanizer. On New Year's Eve 1999, in Newcastle, England, seven women sit in a seedy hotel, having answered a terse message: "Meet in the usual place tonight, 7 p.m. Emergency." In the center of the room is Jamie Spellman's severed head, which has stained the stack of bibles it sits on red with blood. The bible on top is opened to Leviticus 24:19: "An eye for an eye." Each of the women knew Spellman, and each maintains their innocence in his murder, but at least one of them has put this gruesome relic on display. Was it widowed Maureen Jones, mysterious Sarah Smith, librarian Olive Farrugia, teenager Josie Kitchen, journalist Kaysha Jackson, chemist Ana Maria Cortês, or Jamie's wife, Sadia? And, for that matter, what do each of those women have in common? Newcastle Det. Insp. Nova Stokoe is assigned to find out. Alternating viewpoints among the seven women and Sotkoe, Wilding charts how each woman's path crossed with Jamie's, and the mechanisms with which he abused each one's trust, friendship, dreams, and bodies. With sure-footed prose, Wilding nimbly constructs a captivating treatise on revenge and exploitation that rumbles with deep, bracing anger. She's a writer to watch. Agent: Kate Evans, PFD. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT Wilding's powerful book compels readers to consider what they'd do after being deceived by a sociopathic liar, and how far they'd go for retribution. New Year's Eve, 1999. Seven women sit around a table in a sleazy hotel storage room, focused on something covered with a pillowcase. They're here because they all first loved, then hated, the charming Jamie Spellman. Journalist Kaysha Jackson has gathered the group of women from Jamie's past--he'd gaslighted each of them, then discarded them like rubbish. They now realize he's a psychopath and have been discussing their revenge. When they remove the pillowcase, Jamie's severed head stares back. The women never decided on murder, yet one of them couldn't wait. Kaysha didn't kill him, but she's determined to find out who did. She plans to seduce her former lover, Detective Inspector Nova Stokoe, to get inside information from her investigation. But Nova might just figure out who the killer is first. VERDICT This captivating debut literary thriller entwines the searing stories of several women who suffered at the hands of the same man. This cautionary tale satisfies in its culmination of long-overdue justice for spurned women.--K.L. Romo
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Wilding's debut thriller asks which of seven women beheaded a man they all had compelling reasons to kill. Once DI Nova Stokoe learns that the decapitated head found in an upper room in Newcastle's Towneley Arms Hotel is that of scientist Jamie Spellman, the mystery is only beginning. Despite his undoubted charm and the coveted grant he'd won to support a project intended to identify the perpetrators of long-ago sex crimes, Jamie was a master manipulator who seems to have seduced, gaslighted, threatened, and betrayed every woman who crossed his path. It's clear from the beginning that the women in his life--retired policeman's wife Maureen Jones, infertile Sadia Spellman, wealthy Sarah Smith, librarian Olive Farrugia, cafe server Josie Kitchen, journalist Kaysha Jackson, trans chemist Ana Maria Cortês--have somehow made common cause, but it's much less clear how they came together in ways that transcended the particulars of their nominal relationships with him. As the story leaps from one woman's point of view to the next, a damning portrait emerges of a man without scruples who richly deserved his death. What's most distinctive here is not the question of whodunit or even the piercing group portrait of the women in Jamie's life but the delicate care with which Wilding ensures that even the most routine revelations--which of these women was Jamie's aunt, which one his wife, which one the mother of his child, which one his rape victim, which ones his sometime lovers, which of them cast a spell that involved the sacrifice of a sheep--arrive with a jolt. Man-hating driven to a furious point. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
