The Shining Girls

LoveReading Says

Winner of the Best Horror Novel at the British Fantasy Awards 2014.

Breathtakingly chilling, this is written so convincingly the fact that there is a time-travelling serial killer seems completely plausible. Each chapter is headed with either the killer or the victim and then the date; it throws you a little to start, jumping around in time, then you fall in, the story grabs hold and refuses to let go. The author occasionally allows an insight towards her killer, a little understanding as to what has made him choose his ‘shining girls’, she even allows a softening, perhaps a little warmth before ripping your feet from under you again. At times graphic and gruesome, each word, each sentence feels essential; perhaps best not to read this in public though, as flinches, grimaces and yelps are likely companions.

Shortlisted for the CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger 2013.

CWA judges' comment: “The quirky fusion of the sci-fi and crime genres features a time-travelling surreal serial-killer, Harper, whose story begins as a drifter in prohibition-era Chicago. When Harper "steps into sometime else", murdering along the way, he meets his match in the contemporary figures of Kirby, an engaging young journalism intern, and her unlikely sidekick Dan, a burned-out sports writer. The author plays with the abstractions of time, change, decay, memory, and imagination with great assurance and originality.”

Longlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2014.

One of our Books of the Year 2013.

Liz Robinson

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