Last year I read and reviewed Here One Minute by Liane Moriarty, and it changed my attitude to flying. The book’s central character is an elderly woman who stands up on a flight between Hobart, Tasmania and Sydney, Australia and proceeds to tell each of her fellow passengers how and precisely when they will die.
I thought of Cherry Lockwood as chapter one of Jenny Morris’s An Ethical Guide to Murder unfolded. Thea is a pretty normal 26-year-old, sharing a flat in London with her best friend Ruth. They’ve been mates since childhood, but Thea has just failed her bar exams and is reluctantly working in HR at a bank, while Ruth is about to start her first job as a fully-qualified doctor.
Tonight they’re heading out to meet friends and celebrate Ruth’s success, but at breakfast Thea accidentally brushes Ruth’s hand and sees something strange. In a flash she realises that her friend of 17 years is going to die tonight, at 11:44pm to be precise.
She dismisses it as a mere hallucination, brought on by lack of sleep but the same thing happens again at work. When Thea takes the pen to sign for a delivery, she suddenly knows that the messenger has another 10 years left, and will then die at 3:04pm on 2 August. Then, at the club where the gang later meet for Ruth’s celebration, she is bombarded with unwanted information from every person she accidentally bumps into. What in hell is going on?
The crunch comes when Ruth is knocked over by a drunken man, falls and bangs her head. It’s 11:44 and Thea knows her friend is about to breathe her last – unless she can do something about it. Moments later the bloke who caused the accident is himself dead, while Ruth is starting to come around. Thea has committed her first murder and in the process has transferred her victim’s years of life unlived to Ruth.
From the above, it’s clear that you have to suspend belief to get on board with this one, but at the crux of An Ethical Guide to Murder is an important question – who deserves to live and who should die? As Thea wrestles with her conscience, she begins to see her power as a force for good, but is death ever justified?
With power comes great responsibility, and there’s a personal mystery that she would dearly like to put to bed once and for all. When Thea was eight, her parents were killed in a car crash caused by a drunk driver who failed to stop. She was in the car and has hazy memories of that night, but the face of the killer remains blank. What if she could find them and mete out the justice they deserve?
Help arrives in the shape of her old flame Sam, now a high-powered lawyer with lots of contacts and, it seems, limitless cash. Thea is soon in his thrall, and when she shares her secret with him, Sam is keen to use it for his version of ‘good’. After a couple of kills at his behest, though, Thea’s faith in her boyfriend starts to waver. She’s a murder addict and wants to stop the killing spree, but with Sam pushing her will she be able to go cold turkey? And what about her parents’ killer – will she ever be able to find them and put her nightmares to rest?
This is a most unusual book with a unique take on murder and retribution and there’s plenty going on in an occasionally confusing plot where you may well find yourself wavering between sympathising with and thoroughly disliking Thea. At the heart of it all is an overriding question: if you had the power between life and death, would you use it and to whom would you be willing to give those stolen years? It’s a thorny problem, handled with a lightness of touch and even some humour, but An Ethical Guide to Murder will leave you pondering over deep issues that are often skated over in regular crime novels. What an excellent debut!
Another excellent debut is Deadly Animals by Marie Tierney, which took a prize in the 2024 Crime Fiction Lover Awards. Here’s our review.
Simon & Schuster
Print/Kindle/iBook
£4.99
CFL Rating: 4 Stars
