TFW Mister Police gives you all the Clues
*chanting intensifies* CLUES CLUES CLUES CLUES
One thing about me is I love an Artifact ™. If I see a note on the sidewalk, I’m going to read what’s on it, even if nine times out of ten it’s a grocery list. So a whole book full of in-fiction Artifacts you were theoretically never supposed to see is like catnip. If like, I was a cat who had also retained the ability to read. Okay you know what we’re moving on.
Janice Hallett is an absolute master of this. Not the catnip thing the epistolary format thing please keep up. In The Appeal, she’s telling the story of power struggles in a small-town theater troupe in the wake of a murder. We see catty messages between housewives and a potential medical scam unfolding and allusions to Bad Blood from an Incident Overseas. And sifting through all of it are two legal assistants trying to figure out who pushed a kind, popular doctor out a window. In the midst of this we also get a truly upsettingly well-crafted portrait of a woman who’s a little bit lame and nobody likes. In my opinion nailing the voice of someone who’s annoying and unaware is more impressive and a little more bone chilling than capturing the perspective of a hard-core sociopath. SPEAKING OF:
Bindy Mackenzie is the most annoying girl at her school, god bless her, and what’s worse, someone may be trying to kill her. Even though this piece is YA, it’s potentially one of my favorite character studies of all time and I end up rereading it every couple of years. Jaclyn Moriarty is genius in her character choices, giving Bindy her own day-of-the-week stationary and some extremely ungenerous observations about how the other students in her Personal Development class at school could be applying themselves better. Moriarty’s ability to picture exactly what a dingus would say at any given moment is breathtaking, and her ability to make you care about said dingus is even more so. What I’m saying is THIS BOOK WILL MAKE YOU CRY ABOUT A DINGUS.
A hundred-year-old journal uncovered in an old Vermont farmhouse chronicling a banished witch and the dead coming back to visit? I’m there. This old text underpins the present-day narratives that weave through Winter People: a girl living in the farmhouse who finds her mother missing and a copy of the journal in the floorboards and a widow trying to figure out why her husband died in this small Vermont town she’s never heard of with the same journal on his person. This book writes a lot of Mysterious checks and in my opinion it cashes them pretty well.