words MARK TIMLIN
Cath Staincliffe
Allie Kennaway, previously known as Aled, is an 18-year-old transwoman, the victim of a hate crime close to Deansgate in Manchester. Still at sixth form college, she’s all dressed up in a green evening gown for the school prom when she leaves to smoke a joint and loses touch with her friends. After searching for them, she ends up violently beaten to death in a dirty dark alley.
Set in early summer 2016, before the recent surge of interest in transgender issues that has recently filled the media and our social networks, some of the murder team act with sensitivity and some don’t, including the pathologist – who, because Allie had not yet had surgery, constantly misgenders her. Even her own family are not sympathetic, including her aunt who gives a newspaper interview in which she describes Allie’s gender situation as “a passing phase”.
As for the murder squad themselves, there’s a Detective-Constable with mental health problems, a Detective-Sergeant with his own agenda and deeply-rooted notions of male and female behaviourism, plus the Senior Investigating Officer, a Detective-Inspector who lets her family problems get to her, with detrimental effect on the investigation.
Staincliffe takes a tricky subject and treats it with humanity and understanding, having written a tremendous stand-alone crime novel with a shocking twist mid-book, though I sense there may be more to come from the fascinating cast of characters she has created.
Price £7.99. Info: www.littlebrown.co.uk