There are certainly
thriller elements, but there is more to the story than just that. (Review by
Margaret von Klemperer, courtesy of The Witness)
Mad Mabel is
billed as a “domestic thriller”. Crime writing is divided into all kinds of
genres these days – cosy crime, Scandi noir, hard-boiled and so on. But I am
not sure that domestic thriller with its hints of the cosy is really an
adequate description of what is an entertaining and quite complex read. There
are certainly thriller elements, but there is more to the story than just that.
Elsie Fitzpatrick lives in a quiet street in an Australian suburb. She is 81 years old, and keeps to herself, cultivating a curmudgeonly persona. She watches her neighbours but keeps them at arms’ length. That is not surprising: she has a past that she has no wish for them ever to know about. Once, back in her childhood, she was known as Mad Mabel, the youngest Australian ever to be convicted of murder.
Sally Hepworth tells the story in two parts – the then and the now. When the book opens, Elsie has just discovered that someone in the street knows about the background she has tried so hard to keep hidden. And then her neighbour is found dead, by Elsie. He was not her favourite – she publicly referred to him as her nemesis. He had a noisy dog and there were other inevitable dog-hygiene related disputes. So it is a little awkward that she is the one to find him. Even the police begin to show interest.
The reader gradually learns about Elsie/Mabel’s childhood. She was something of a misfit. Tall and ungainly, she was clever but not the kind of kid who would find making friends easy, and she was subjected to some nasty childhood cruelties. And her family life was far from happy. She was an only child, but somehow, accidents, tragedy and corpses seemed to follow her around, even when she was very young.
Eventually, in the present, as it becomes clear that her past is still with her and she begins to discover that she may have misjudged some of the people around her, she is persuaded to tell her story to a pair of journalists, and the reader is gradually told the whole – or most of the whole – tale. It is sad and very revealing and Hepworth makes the most of playing with the readers’ feelings. I must admit that I had worked out one of the final twists a long time before it became clear, but that did little to detract from the plot.
Mad Mabel is an easy, pacy read, but it does raise some significant issues, particularly those of prejudice, loneliness, violence and cruelty, and the unpleasant outcomes they can lead to. – Margaret von Klemperer
Mad Mabel is published by Macmillan: ISBN 978-1035096176
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