Published in 2022
263 pages
Kate McCaffrey grew up in Perth’s northern suburbs. She has a degree in English and Art and a diploma in Education.
Kate is the author of three award-winning novels for young adults: Destroying Avalon (2006), winner of the WAYBRA Award for older readers and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award for Young Adults; In Ecstasy (2008), winner of the Australian Family Therapists Children’s Literature Awards; and Beautiful Monster (2010), named a 2011 White Raven, selected from newly published books from around the world as especially noteworthy by the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany.
What is this book about?
This established WA-based writer examines notions of truth, gender, identity and acceptance in a compelling novel about a cold-case podcast.
Truth is like a lens we apply to everything we see, it is malleable and transformative, we can bend it, mould it, shape it, vanish it. We do this to present the versions of ourselves we want the world to see, and to hide the versions we can’t bear to reveal.
Newly returned to Western Australia, journalist Amy Rhinehart pitches a crime podcast to increase her radio station’s ratings. Her idea: to use the listeners of the show as its co-creators, with live-time calls and suggestion boards. The case: Jonah Scott, charged and imprisoned for life for the murder of his girlfriend, transgender woman Casey Williams. Jonah went to great lengths to hide the body – but when arrested, confessed immediately and pleaded guilty, negating the need for a trial. Amy believes there is something darker at the heart of this case and sets about finding the truth, investigating a world of drugs, sex, gender identity and religious cults.
Threaded through the main narrative, the podcast transcripts represent a story-within-a-story, exploring the characters of Jonah and Casey and the relationship between them, interwoven with Amy’s investigation into the cult run by Jonah’s family and its potential involvement in Casey’s murder.
