Remember the teenage girl who was murdered in Crow-on-Sea in 2016? A horrific story. Google it. Or the journalist Alec Z. Carelli, the guy who went to school with Louis Theroux, Adam Buxton and Giles Coren and wrote a book about it? Remember how it was pulled because of the controversy over the way he obtained some of his material? Well, the publisher has decided to release that book after all.
There will be no upset loved ones –except perhaps those who were affected by the true crimes mentioned
None of this is true. Instead, Eliza Clark, the author of Boy Parts and recently named by Granta one of the best of young British novelists, has written an untrue true crime book, a satire on true crime writers and true crime consumers embedded in an intelligently constructed, rapid lounger-by-the-pool piece of crime fiction.
It starts with a note from the publisher: ‘Artistic merit should not be erased from history simply for causing offence.’
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