A Child's Book of True Crime: A Novel [Paperback]

Chloe Hooper (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2003

Tasmanian schoolteacher Kate Byrne is having an affair with the father of her most gifted fourth grader, Lucien. Her lover's wife has just published Murder at Black Swan Point, a true-crime story about the brutal slaying of a young adulteress in a nearby town. Kate herself has become so obsessed with the murder and so convinced that the published account has it all wrong that she sets about writing her own version -- this one for children, narrated by Australian animals. Though Lucien's father brings Kate to life sexually in encounters of escalating eroticism, he cannot dull her obsession. Fixated on the crime of passion, Kate is becoming less and less aware of the present and of how her behavior may align her fate with that of the dead girl. Chloe Hooper chillingly captures this young woman's unraveling in an intense, witty, superbly crafted novel.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Penzler Pick, February 2002: Chloe Hooper has chosen to explore the dark terrain of obsession in this, her first novel.

Kate Byrne teaches fourth grade students in Tasmania, the large island off the mainland of Australia. Young, awkward, and not very self-assured, Kate becomes involved in an affair with Thomas Marne, the father of one of her students, Lucien, a charismatic but withdrawn youngster. Kate worries about him and the dark nature of some of his drawings, and she worries that Lucien may be having problems with his mother, Veronica, and her career as a bestselling true crime writer.

Veronica's book is currently on the bestseller list and she is busy promoting it. The book, Murder at Black Swan Point, tells the story of one of the most notorious crimes in the area. In 1983 a young woman, Ellie Siddell, was brutally murdered by the wife of the man with whom she was having an affair. The wife's car was found at the edge of a cliff, and it was commonly believed that she threw herself off it, although her body was never found. Years later, Veronica was able to interview the husband before he died, and this interview, as well as some of the crime scene evidence, is explored in her book. She feels that there may be another explanation for the murder of Ellie and the wife's subsequent disappearance.

Kate finds herself both charmed and appalled by Veronica when she visits her son at the school, but Kate also becomes obsessed with the murder and finds herself drawn to Black Swan Point. As the details of Ellie Siddell's death are slowly revealed and the affair between Kate and Thomas gets more obsessive, it becomes obvious that history may repeat itself.

The action pauses throughout A Child's Book of True Crime for an account of the murder at Black Swan Point written for children, with animals indigenous to the continent of Australia taking the parts of the people involved. It is not until the end of the novel that we find out who is writing this story and why. Kate also involves her students in discussions involving everything from the meanings of words to ethical questions concerning behavior and whether actions have consequences.

One of the strong points of the narrative is the description of Tasmania and its history. Like much of Australia, Tasmania was a penal colony, and the history of the region involves the lives of the convicts. Children visit the prisons on field trips. The animals they encounter play a part in their everyday lives and are also very different for the non-Australian reader, making this not only an eerie read but also an instructive one. This is a story guaranteed to stay with you long after you've closed the covers. --Otto Penzler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

From a young Australian comes this darkly comic debut starring Kate Byrne, a 22-year-old fourth-grade teacher at Endport Primary in Tasmania. One of Kate's favorite students is Lucien Marne, whose precociousness and premature cynicism make him an outsider in class. He greatly resembles his father, Thomas, a well-to-do lawyer with whom Kate is having a passionate affair. After Thomas's urbane wife, Veronica, publishes a creepy children's book, Murder at Black Swan Point, strange things begin to happen to Kate. In her book, Veronica inserts cute Australian animal characters into a gruesome plot based on a real-life crime: teenager Eleanor Siddell worked as an assistant to veterinarian Graeme Harvey; the older man seduced Eleanor, who easily succumbed to his charms. Allegedly, when Graeme's wife discovered their secret trysts, she murdered the girl and disappeared, leaving her abandoned car atop Suicide Cliffs. Now, in the wake of increasingly disturbing events the failure of her car's brakes, Lucien's violent drawings Kate suspects that perhaps Veronica wrote the book as a warning, or maybe even a plan of action. Kate's paranoia leads her to distrust everyone, including herself. The writing, though frequently excellent, is compromised by the book's overall feeling of disorganization. Kate displays a level of sophistication unlikely for a 22-year-old who's just striking out on her own she tosses off such observations as "perhaps all perversity comes gift-wrapped, so to speak, in the banal" and far too many pages are devoted to her musings on Eleanor's murder. Hooper's wicked, sexy tale nevertheless proves she is a writer of great promise. 6-city author tour.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743225139
• ISBN-13: 978-0743225137
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,207,860 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 'AN ANSWER IS WHERE THE MIND COMES TO REST', July 3, 2002

By 

Larry L. Looney (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Child's Book of True Crime (Hardcover)

The above quote, from p. 194 of Chloe Hooper's A CHILD'S BOOK OF TRUE CRIME, is an apt one for describing the feeling I was left with after reading this novel. There are so many options presented during the protagonist's exploration of the mystery described (the murder, years before of a young woman with whom a veterinarian was conducting an extra-marital affair, and the subsequent disappearance of his wife) that the reader is pretty much left to draw his/her own conclusions -- nothing is really resolved for certain. This lends an air of doubt to the story, but it also keeps it from being 'tied up nicely' at the end. In many cases, this is an appreciated effect of good writing -- but here, it left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied.

Hooper's writing is good -- especially in relation to Kate, her young central character. Kate is 23, out on her own for the first time in her life, teaching 4th grade in a primary school in Tasmania. Her uncertainties about how she should live her own life come into play very strongly here. Allowing herself to be drawn into an affair with a married man -- the father of her favorite pupil -- is only her first mistake. She comes to suspect that his wife has known about their affair for some time, and begins to feel like she might be in danger. The man's wife is a writer, having just published a 'true crime' book about the affair and disappearance mentioned above -- the crime is still vividly in the minds of people who live in the area, and they are very resentful and offended by the woman's prying into events which they would just as soon keep to themselves.

The story of Kate brings out many uncertainties about life with which, I'm sure, many of the readers can identify -- her above-mentioned search for direction in her life being the most prevalent. It also astutely describes many things felt and experienced by young children -- using Lucien, the son of her paramour, as its focus. Lucien is tortured and troubled by what he sees as coldness and seperation in the lives of his parents. His father admits on one occasion to Kate (and this is very telling) that they try to treat him as 'a small adult' -- not a very realistic (or healthy) way to raise a child.

Hooper has taken on a difficult and challenging topic/theme for her first novel -- it doesn't quite succeed, but that doesn't mean she's not a fine writer with a lot of potential. I'd be very interested to see what she does next.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Murder Margaret Atwood Wrote, April 25, 2002

By 

peter wild - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Child's Book of True Crime (Hardcover)

This book is like an over-large child's jigsaw puzzle (you know the ones I mean: each piece of the puzzle is inchthick and cut from wood) with one, two, three, four, five pieces missing. You can't tell what the picture is supposed to be (you've lost the top of the box), but - from what you can make out - it looks like it could have been interesting.

Kate Byrne is a twenty-two year old teacher at a small school in Tasmania. She is having an affair with Thomas, the father of Lucien, one of the children in her class. What complicates the issue somewhat is the fact that Thomas' wife, Veronica, is the celebrated author of a book entitled Murder at Black Swan Point, an account of a local murder in which a young woman was savagely murdered, supposedly by the wife of the man she was having an affair with.

When you learn that somebody has scratched I KNOW on Kate's classroom door and tampered with her brakes, you might think so-far, so Murder She Wrote. However, that would be to overlook the presence of Kate's own book (which acts as a preface to each chapter), a true crime book for children (basically retelling - or reinvestigating - the events of Murder at Black Swan Point with animals standing in for their human counterparts).

Okay, you say. So it's a literary Murder She Wrote (with Angela Lansbury playing - say, Margaret Atwood). Well, yes and no. Because Chloe Hooper is no Margaret Atwood (much as I think she would like A Child's Book of True Crime to mirror the success of Alias Grace). This feels very much like a first novel. Don't get me wrong. There are lots of good things here (what goes on in Kate's mind, the relationship between Kate and Thomas and Veronica, the brief sex scene behind the recycling bins). It's just that we often find ourselves being driven further and further away from the crime scene, as it were (I'm not convinced the animal story is useful or successful, I'm not convinced Kate would so easily start brandishing a knife, I'm not convinced everything would slip apart as faultlessly as it does).

I'm afraid it's a case of 4 out of 5 for effort, but only 2 or 3 out of 5 for accomplishment.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A writer of great promise, August 13, 2003

By 

George M Woods (Anchorage, AK USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Child's Book of True Crime: A Novel (Paperback)

Rare is it that I pause in reading a book to admire the writer's craft, his or, as in this case, her ability to turn a phrase, the well structured sentence that makes me think perhaps I should start reading poetry. Chloe Hooper's book, A Child's Book of True Crime is a story that I stopped often to admire. Less a murder mystery and more a meditation upon the banal and routine crimes committed against children as they pass toward adulthood the writing becomes at once more luminous and less attached to the "true crime" of the title. Ms Hooper moves freely among perspectives and realities-the dead make appearances and a detective agency of wildlife creatures editorialize while the story's protagonist seems in danger of becoming the victim of the crime she investigates. Ultimately what matters most in this wonderful novel is the delicious pleasure of its reading. I recommend it highly.