A Child's Book of True Crime [Signed] [Hardcover]

Chloe Hooper (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2002

Fiction Adult Murder mystery, involves a teacher, an affair with one of her students father, and murder mystery. Novel

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf; First Edition edition (2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0224062379
• ISBN-13: 978-0224062374
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,864,946 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.