Stacy Willingham. Photo / Supplied
A Flicker in the Dark
by Stacy Willingham
(HarperCollins, $33)
Stacy Willingham is a debut novelist but there is nothing in her assured and excellent first book that would give that away. From the first page of the prologue it is clear she knows exactly what she is doing.
Packed with cunning
plot twists, sketchy characters and creepy settings, all delivered with a knowing nod to the Southern Gothic writers, A Flicker in the Dark is a genuinely heart-pounding read. What lifts it above the glut of gripping, pacy crime fiction landing now is the narrative perspective - a woman whose father is a convicted serial killer is retraumatised when young women in her orbit start to go missing.
A psychologist in private practice, Chloe Davis has spent 20 years trying to move past the awful summer when she was 12, when six teenage girls in her small hometown were killed by her devoted dad. She hasn't spoken to him since his arrest but she has devoted her life to understanding human behaviour in an effort to unpick the darkness that lies at the centre of her family, now shattered. Chloe is a victim, but one with a spine of steel. She's planning her wedding to the nearly perfect Daniel when her safe, carefully calibrated life takes a sickening turn.
Twenty years after her father's killing spree, a copycat appears to be at work in her neighbourhood.
