All men are rapacious.
That’s the spear gun point in the shape shifting narrative, THE SHARK, by Emma Styles. She proclaims she writes Australian crime fiction about young women taking on the patriarchy and that’s what she has done in this killer read.
Like the apex predator it is named for, THE SHARK is constantly on the move, sharing a twin narrative between two girls, Rachel and Carmen.
On the surface, a serial killer dubbed The Shark stalks the beach-side West Australian suburb of Cottesloe, targeting young female swimmers whose bodies are later found on the shoreline. Frustrated with the cops attempts to catch the culprit, two teenage girls who met at a psychiatric facility are hell-bent on revenge, for different and divergent reasons, and after operating solo, team up to take matters into their own hands, with bloody results.
Raych mourns the loss of Piper, taken as their burgeoning love story was beginning to bloom and will go to any length to discover what happened to her, while Carmen suspects her own disturbing connection to the killer.
Together they form an uneasy alliance and, in a moment that changes the trajectory of their lives, Carmen and Raych abduct and imprison the prime suspect. By the pricking of his thumbs, something nasty his way comes. By amputating digits do these delinquent vigilantes think they can save other girls from the menace of The Shark, or are their intentions murkier? Can they trust each other’s agenda?
Styles throws a bucket full of pop culture from James Bond to Jaws as well as red herring chum into the narrative sea, and the bait is taken with largely bated breath, a tight line of mystery and suspense for the most part with a bit of slackening in the middle section.
The denouement is a thrilling reeling in of the perps above and below decks, a resolution of sorts and a damning indictment of paternal patterning.
FIN
THE SHARK by Emma Styles is published by Sphere.
