Publishers Weekly
★ 07/17/2023
Wilding debuts with a wickedly clever feminist thriller about the murder of a corrupt womanizer. On New Year’s Eve 1999, in Newcastle, England, seven women sit in a seedy hotel, having answered a terse message: “Meet in the usual place tonight, 7 p.m. Emergency.” In the center of the room is Jamie Spellman’s severed head, which has stained the stack of bibles it sits on red with blood. The bible on top is opened to Leviticus 24:19: “An eye for an eye.” Each of the women knew Spellman, and each maintains their innocence in his murder, but at least one of them has put this gruesome relic on display. Was it widowed Maureen Jones, mysterious Sarah Smith, librarian Olive Farrugia, teenager Josie Kitchen, journalist Kaysha Jackson, chemist Ana Maria Cortês, or Jamie’s wife, Sadia? And, for that matter, what do each of those women have in common? Newcastle Det. Insp. Nova Stokoe is assigned to find out. Alternating viewpoints among the seven women and Sotkoe, Wilding charts how each woman’s path crossed with Jamie’s, and the mechanisms with which he abused each one’s trust, friendship, dreams, and bodies. With sure-footed prose, Wilding nimbly constructs a captivating treatise on revenge and exploitation that rumbles with deep, bracing anger. She’s a writer to watch. Agent: Kate Evans, PFD. (June)
From the Publisher
With seven unreliable narrators, the twists in this one will keep readers guessing.” –Parade
“Wilding delves deep, focusing on a character-driven story in her deliciously tense debut.” –South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“This captivating debut literary thriller entwines the searing stories of several women who suffered at the hands of the same man. This cautionary tale satisfies in its culmination of long-overdue justice for spurned women.” –Library Journal (starred)
“What’s most distinctive here is not the question of whodunit or even the piercing group portrait of the women in Jamie’s life but the delicate care with which Wilding ensures that even the most routine revelations...arrive with a jolt.” –Kirkus Reviews
“A clever and tight thriller that demands to be read in one setting.” –Crime Reads
“[The women’s] stories converge in a way that will appeal to Kate Atkinson’s readers…This debut author is one to watch.” –FirstCLUE
“Mesmerizing and unflinchingly dark...Wilding is a powerful new talent whose captivating characters will stay with readers long after they’ve finished the book.” –Rachel Kapelke-Dale, author of The Ingenue
"A propulsive and complexly layered story...Fans of Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware won’t want to miss this one." –Nora Murphy, author of The Favor
“Harrowing and haunting, Rose Wilding’s assured debut is full of nuanced, complex, beautifully flawed characters...completely compelling.” —Sara Nisha Adams, author of The Reading List
"Absolutely, barnstormingly brilliant. Beyond gripping, with wonderful characters you know and care about, feel rage for and with. Perfectly paced and plotted, I loved every dark, clever, powerful page." –Cressida McLaughlin, author of The House of Birds and Butterflies
“Wilding takes an axe to toxic masculinity...maneuvering her vivid characters around like a virtuoso puppeteer. It’s a powerful, accomplished and important debut from a writer who has not only found her own voice but given one to others who have previously been silenced.” –Trevor Wood, author of Dead End Street
“Assured & compelling…Rose Wilding’s evocation of the Newcastle setting & pitch-perfect ear for dialogue make every one of her characters live & breathe. I love the way she can unpick their lives before our eyes, exposing every secret.” –Kate Rhodes, author of Crossbones Yard
“Utterly unputdownable, absorbing, dark and at times ineffably beautiful...With unforgettable, complex characters and a sympathetic, painterly eye for detail that makes them and the landscapes they inhabit leap from the page, Wilding conjures their stories to life in all their knotty, vibrant glory. The result is not to be missed.” –Lauren Brown, author of Hands: An Anxious Mind Unpicked
“A very accomplished debut...I loved it.” –Harriet Tyce, bestselling author of The Lies You Told
‘With beautiful, gripping writing and depth, Speak of the Devil is a mesmerising, moving story that is impossible to look away from. Superb!’ –Gytha Lodge, bestselling author of Little Sister
"A smart and totally compelling tale of revenge - with brilliantly complex characters. It hooked me from the opening page and kept me guessing right up to the end." –Emily Koch, author of Keep Him Close
“A story with a fiercely feminist heart [and] lots of moments that stopped me in my tracks.” –Katie Bishop, author of The Girls of Summer
Library Journal
★ 06/01/2023
DEBUT Wilding's powerful book compels readers to consider what they'd do after being deceived by a sociopathic liar, and how far they'd go for retribution. New Year's Eve, 1999. Seven women sit around a table in a sleazy hotel storage room, focused on something covered with a pillowcase. They're here because they all first loved, then hated, the charming Jamie Spellman. Journalist Kaysha Jackson has gathered the group of women from Jamie's past—he'd gaslighted each of them, then discarded them like rubbish. They now realize he's a psychopath and have been discussing their revenge. When they remove the pillowcase, Jamie's severed head stares back. The women never decided on murder, yet one of them couldn't wait. Kaysha didn't kill him, but she's determined to find out who did. She plans to seduce her former lover, Detective Inspector Nova Stokoe, to get inside information from her investigation. But Nova might just figure out who the killer is first. VERDICT This captivating debut literary thriller entwines the searing stories of several women who suffered at the hands of the same man. This cautionary tale satisfies in its culmination of long-overdue justice for spurned women.—K.L. Romo
Kirkus Reviews
2023-03-11
Wilding’s debut thriller asks which of seven women beheaded a man they all had compelling reasons to kill.
Once DI Nova Stokoe learns that the decapitated head found in an upper room in Newcastle’s Towneley Arms Hotel is that of scientist Jamie Spellman, the mystery is only beginning. Despite his undoubted charm and the coveted grant he’d won to support a project intended to identify the perpetrators of long-ago sex crimes, Jamie was a master manipulator who seems to have seduced, gaslighted, threatened, and betrayed every woman who crossed his path. It’s clear from the beginning that the women in his life—retired policeman’s wife Maureen Jones, infertile Sadia Spellman, wealthy Sarah Smith, librarian Olive Farrugia, cafe server Josie Kitchen, journalist Kaysha Jackson, trans chemist Ana Maria Cortês—have somehow made common cause, but it’s much less clear how they came together in ways that transcended the particulars of their nominal relationships with him. As the story leaps from one woman’s point of view to the next, a damning portrait emerges of a man without scruples who richly deserved his death. What’s most distinctive here is not the question of whodunit or even the piercing group portrait of the women in Jamie’s life but the delicate care with which Wilding ensures that even the most routine revelations—which of these women was Jamie’s aunt, which one his wife, which one the mother of his child, which one his rape victim, which ones his sometime lovers, which of them cast a spell that involved the sacrifice of a sheep—arrive with a jolt.
Man-hating driven to a furious point.
