A student is involved in a campus shooting and a convalescing forensic psychiatrist is in trouble again

A STUDENT is involved in a campus shooting and a convalescing forensic psychiatrist is in trouble again

CRIME All These Perfect Strangers Aoife Clifford, Simon & Schuster, $29.99

CRIME Dangerous to Know Anne Buist, Text, $29.99

Reviewed by MARGOT LLOYD

AUSTRALIAN Aoife Clifford has been writing short crime stories for years, but All These Perfect Strangers marks her first foray into longform fiction, and she warns us from the outset that this is a story that “could be told a hundred different ways’’.

It’s the early ’90s and a university scholarship has allowed Pen Shepherd to start a new life, away from a bad past in an unfriendly small town. She starts making friends and meeting boys, working towards a career in law. Then the first body appears on campus and everything falls apart. Somehow Pen ends up writing her story back home in the small town she thought she would escape.

Aside from some early moments when it’s difficult to work out who’s who and what’s what, Clifford is very good at writing in the voice of her unreliable narrator. Pen guides us through her part in the college killings, explaining what she’s edited out for her friends, her mother and her psychologist — which makes you wonder if she’s lying to herself as well. The campus college life she describes is claustrophobic, sexist and very ’90s, as students try to cover up pasts that these days would be readily available for all to read online.

The mystery of who killed who and why is only surpassed by the mystery of Pen herself, and what horrible things in her past have formed her. Clifford imparts information only as it’s needed, creating a horrible but complete picture of a young woman who has learnt, through necessity, to simply survive.

The tone of the narrative is one of dark secrecy, aided by a location that remains nameless, and it’s this atmosphere that makes the story so affecting. The final scenes cast a new light on everything that’s gone before, upsetting the careful image that Pen has constructed of herself, and proving that Clifford is a nuanced storyteller with very interesting things to say.

A different kind of crime story, Anne Buist’s Dangerous to Know, her second book in the Natalie King series, has a narrator who’s only unreliable if she’s messing with her medication.

After the havoc of her previous case, forensic psychiatrist Natalie King is on the mend after six months of serious depression, ending with shock therapy and the need to get away from her fast-paced life in Collingwood. She decides to rent a house on the Great Ocean Road, where she can take things slowly and pursue some work at a university in Geelong.

Frank, her new boss, is a good-looking man with an unfortunate past: his first wife died at 39 weeks pregnant. With his second wife pregnant and entering her third trimester, Frank is worried about history repeating itself and needs someone to talk to. Natalie wasn’t looking to take care of anyone except herself, but she seems to be the best one for the job. Then another tragic accident happens, Natalie finds herself almost run off the road by a sinister grey car, and it looks like she just can’t escape trouble.

There’s something delightfully daggy about the Natalie King series. Natalie’s “bad girl” persona is a little dated: she wears leather mini skirts, enjoys riding fast bikes and likes casual sex. Scandalous! But these books are fun all the same, and Natalie’s illness gives her investigations another dimension. Buist’s debut Medea’s Curse was uneven, as endless dialogue got the better of her storytelling. In this return, she’s ironed out the kinks, bringing tension in spades at the same time.

Originally published as A student is involved in a campus shooting and a convalescing forensic psychiatrist is in trouble again