Villain

“I was aware of the weight of Spoole’s head, clutched against my stomach. I hadn’t thought of a head being something that was heavy to carry. Another new thing learned.”

Alistair’s another middle-aged casualty struggling with divorce and a career that’s hit a dead end. Erica’s haunted by the violent deaths of three boys. And Charlie’s a clickbait journalist who can’t generate traffic. Now, a series of attention seeking murders sucks them into the same careening news cycle. In Villain, though, the mystery is not who the killer is. It’s what he’ll do next, how he’ll keep trending and if he’ll get away with his crimes as the investigation closes in.

Edward Berridge’s new novel is a darkly comic domestic noir taking on the big themes of love, desire and mortality and shaking them up in a bag with contemporary talking points like internet dating, social media celebrity, post separation parenting, IVF and the white collar workplace.

It’s Girl on a Train meets Michel Houellebecq’s Atomised with a twist at the end you’ll never see coming. There’s nothing like it in Australian crime fiction.