Emma Styles’ debut novel No Country for Girls centred around two very different young women who end up on a violent road trip northward through Western Australia. Her follow up, The Shark, also focusses on two mismatched teenage girls, but this pair are navigating a very different set of issues.
The Shark is set in the City of Fremantle, just south of Perth which has been rocked by a series of murders. Young women have disappeared and washed up dead on the beach days later in a way that have been made to look like shark attacks. One of the victims was Raych’s best friend. Now, almost a year later, Raych is putting herself out there, as bait, trying to attract the killer. Meanwhile, Carmen has her own dreamlike connection to the killer but finds that connection hard to remember clearly or work through due to the blackouts that leave her with lost time. Due to their focus on the killer, Raych and Carmen are forced into an uneasy alliance that takes them down some very dark and dangerous paths.
The Shark is in some ways a tough read. Both of the main characters are traumatised in different ways and their actions and decisions are partially informed by that trauma. Much like Rebecca Hannigan’s recent debut Darkrooms, the revelations of what Raych and Carmen have been through as the story progresses allows readers to understand their motivations and behaviours even while not necessarily agreeing with them.
Styles builds an effective thriller around the two girls which manages to defy expectations and a plot that zigs just when readers are expecting it to zag. All this is delivered within an atmospheric rendering of a Freemantle trying be normal while its citizens live with the knowledge that a killer stalks the streets. And just a warning for those who are a little squeamish – true to the title there are not just metaphorical sharks (the nickname given to the serial killer) here but real ones also.
The Shark by Emma Styles
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