The Shark
by Emma Styles
Hachette Australia
Emma Styles places the reader amongst the Norfolk pines and grassed terraces of Cottesloe Beach as 18 year-old Raych shelters from the February heat, and a shark alarm sends a scramble of bodies out of the water.
It was all about sharks that summer – in and out of the water. A serial killer was at large in the affluent beachside suburb and had been dubbed The Shark after several young female swimmers had gone missing, and a couple of bodies had washed up on the shoreline.
The police had said that Neil Fraser Lock had been promoted from being a person of interest to a suspect, but he hadn’t been arrested because of a lack of evidence. Seventeen year-old Carmen was watching him at his parent’s house in Cottesloe, and at his workplace at the golf course from an abandoned building across the road.
Both Raych and Carmen need answers from Loch. Raych was determined to find out what had happened to her closest friend Piper, whose body hadn’t been found yet, and was trying her best to attract the attention of the man who was cruising the streets of Cottesloe after midnight. Carmen knew he had broken into her sister’s bedroom, even though no one believed her.
Carmen had a huge melt-down after the bedroom incident because her mind had gone blank, and Raych went on a destructive rampage when she heard that Piper was missing just as their relationship was starting to blossom. As a result, Raych and Carmen shared a room in the juvenile psych ward, but they were not friends.
There are so many parallels with the Claremont Serial Killer when three young women went missing from Claremont and only two bodies were later found. This was in 1996 and 1997, but it was all over the news every time another task force was appointed to solve the murders.
Police had a man under surveillance for driving around Claremont after midnight but, like Lock, he insisted that he was just making sure that the young women were safe. After years of surveillance, police declared that he was no longer a person of interest, and it was not until 2016 that someone else was arrested.
Perth-born Emma Styles puts a twist to this bleak tale of predatory violence by having Raych and Carmen, frustrated by the lack of police action, take matters into their own hands and go after Lock.
Of course, the teenagers, who don’t even trust each other, get in way over their heads. The violence escalates, the convoluted story unravels and the reader is compelled to keep reading despite some confronting situations.
Lezly Herbert
