Author: Emma Styles
Publisher: Sphere (Hachette Australia)
Reviewer: Ashleigh Meikle
Girls have been vanishing along the West Australian coast for months. It’s summer, and when more girls go missing, teenagers Raych and Carmen form an unlikely alliance. They’re furious that the police scale investigations back. Why do the police seem to think there are more important crimes to solve, and why do these young women who would fit the profile of ‘perfect victims’ become so invested in finding the killer? The question “why” reverberates throughout the entire story.
Young. Fit. White. The missing girls are getting far more media attention than Raych’s friend Piper, who she would have died to save, who’d been gone for more than a year. Carmen is hiding her own connection to the murders, and she’s not shy about holding people at arms’ length. She’s been beaten down. Adopted as a baby and forever compared to the perfect adoptive sister she was always made to feel like a burden. Her presence in this novel is always uneasy, as though we’re not meant to wholly trust Carmen or what she reveals.
Raych and Carmen are desperate. They have conflicting motives, but the same goal. Tension mounts, and when they kidnap the prime suspect after another girl goes missing, horrifying truths emerge about the teenagers and their past. Their prior connection, from events that happened a year before this story begins, is threaded throughout the novel. At first, it’s vague, but we learn more as we delve further into The Shark. I felt we knew Raych better than Carmen, which was frustrating at times, and impacted the early pacing of the story. It picked up after the prime suspect was kidnapped, and the development of the teenagers’ characters became intriguing at this point.
The Shark has all the elements of a good psychological thriller. Throughout the story I was never sure about Raych or Carmen’s motives or connections. The author explored themes around mental health and the teetering divide between prey and predator. She poses the question: what can tip someone who has never committed a crime and never been violent, over the edge and into a place where they become capable of something unthinkable.
The Shark is set in Perth’s beachside suburb of Cottesloe, and if you’ve never been there, the descriptions of the setting will give you a real feel for the location. For people familiar with the area, there are echoes of real-life events: the Claemont Serial Killer’s hunting ground, a fatal shark attack, and the disappearance of a local young woman in the late 1980s. The shadows of those real-life memories add an element of darkness to the story.
What makes The Shark work is the timeline. A good thriller often has a set timeframe, hours or days in which to solve the crime or save the world, and where roadblocks are thrown at the protagonist to make their lives frustrating or dangerous. Raych and Carmen are unreliable narrators with different versions of their experiences and I was never sure who to believe. Raych seemed more genuine and open at times, as her chapters are written in first person, and Carmen’s were in third person. At more than one juncture, I wondered if this style was meant to throw me off my suspicions and judgements. I was very surprised by some of the twists in the plot.
At first I wondered if this was meant to be a YA novel, as Raych and Carmen were teenagers. However, it is an adult crime novel with teenage protagonists. This works well and conveys the fear women feel in everyday life. It provides social commentary about how society devalues crimes against women, and explores the lengths some people go to when the system has failed them. The Shark also feels like a revenge novel at times, and shows what a slippery slope it can be when people take justice into their own hands.
By the time I got to the end, I was determined to find out the truth. How did Raych and Carmen play the hands they were dealt? How did they resolve the situation they created and what were the consequences? And who was telling the truth? It’s a compelling and tense read.
Publisher’s Blurb:
A killer is stalking the suburbs of Western Australia. Two teenage girls hell-bent on revenge take matters into their own hands, with deadly results. Another dark, uniquely voice-led crime thriller from Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize-winner Emma Styles.
Every monster has a weakness.
At the height of Australian summer, a serial killer known as The Shark stalks a coastal suburb, hunting young female swimmers.
Afraid and furious at the failure of the police to protect them, two women fight back. Raych is grieving someone she’d have died to save, while Carmen hides her own disturbing connection to the murders.
In desperation, they form an uneasy alliance. And when another girl vanishes, they take matters into their own hands – by kidnapping the prime suspect. But as their interrogation spirals, horrifying truths surface on both sides of the table.
The clock is ticking to save the missing girl. And in their quest for justice, Raych and Carmen must face the darkest question of all: have they caught a monster – or become one?
The Shark is a propulsive psychological thriller about fear, vengeance and the thin line between predator and victim.