Patrick Carey

There's a sort of mirroring that happens between the women inside the refuge and DS Whitworth in the sense that neither of them are particularly surprised about what's happened.

And that creates a sort of really scary atmosphere, I think.

Yeah, I'm the same.

I'm a big sort of crime watcher myself, more a crime watcher than I am a crime reader, to be honest.

And I was the same, Kate.

I was genuinely like gobsmacked.

And I think part of that is how deftly Moore handles the switching between timelines, who's talking to who, who knows who, who has insight into the situation.

So it's actually more clear

complicated than it appears on the surface, because I think a superficial reading of this book could say, oh, it's a pretty standard crime novel with some literary flourishes.

But there's actually something quite subversive happening, I think, in this book, which is more pushing, taking the sort of standard narrative of perhaps the English crime novel and poking holes in it.

That's what I really enjoyed about the book.

I think she's really good at characterisation.

I mean, Katie is a really sympathetic and understandable character who has complexity, who isn't a stereotype of a battered woman by any means.

She's complicated.

She has agency.

She understands, to a certain extent at least, what's happening to her.

That makes for really riveting reading, but I think it also serves Moore's project of shining a light on how complex these things are.

Well, I mean, when I was first out of uni, the 80s music was very cool, Kate.

So I actually know from the bands you've listed there, I know most of them and am a fan.

But yeah, I mean, I think.