Speak of the Devil

Jamie Spellman is dead and nobody’s sorry. The women in his life are not only fine with the loss, we find eight of them sitting in a disused room above a Manchester pub with Jamie’s head on the table before them, a smell of “rot and pennies” in the air. One of them probably did the gruesome deed, but it’s hard to tell who when the story of each woman’s awful interactions with loathsome Jamie gets underway. It could have been his wife, Sadia; god knows he treated her badly enough. But Kaysha, the journalist investigating the story, knows that even though it’s always the spouse, the other women had equally valid reasons to hasten Jamie’s end. Another possibility is the teenager he was stringing along. Or maybe the mother who’s lost a daughter thanks to Jamie. Everyone’s got a story, and as they unspool, a lot is squeezed in, from infertility to alcoholism and from anger-fueled affairs to vicious gaslighting. It all comes together to link the women, whose stories converge in a way that will appeal to Kate Atkinson’s readers, and to create an ending that brings us back to that head on the table, but in a twisting, unexpected way. This debut author is one to watch.