Year to Learn a Woman, A by Paddy Richardson - Penguin Books (NZ) (2008), Paperback, 396 pages [Our New Books - LibraryThing(link is external)]
This is a book that was recently suggested by a commentor on this site - and needless to say, had to get my hands on a copy which I've now done. I'll be putting this in the database here asap - but in the short term:
From the blurb:
When freelance journalist Claire Wright is offered a commission to write the story of notorious serial sex offender Travis Crill, her initial reluctance is overridden by the lure of financial reward and her own growing fascination with her subject.
Sounds fascinating doesn't it!
Claire is a Dunedin freelance writer who is hired by a dodgy lawyer to write a biography of a serial rapist at present in prison. She's wary, but she's a solo mother with a teenage daughter and desperately needs the money. The rapist's very name, Travis Crill, inspires revulsion from everyone she approaches, but despite many warnings she forges on. Crill himself, when she interviews him in prison, is chillingly charming. A rapist?
Initially there are few clues to how this man became a violent psychotic rapist, but slowly Claire begins to unravel the story. What are his parents hiding? Why did the rapes occur only every October? And how does he seem to know so much about her? If Crill is locked away in jail, why is Claire so paranoid? Could she be Crill's next victim? In the style typical of this genre, the novel explodes into a final terrifying climax which forces Claire into a violent confrontation with Crill.