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Summary
Summary
'Gripping, devastating...Breathtaking' Clare Mackintosh
'Powerful and chilling, with a shocking twist' Guardian
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He's been looking in the windows again. Messing with cameras. Leaving notes.
Supposed to be a refuge. But death got inside.
When Katie Straw's body is pulled from the waters of the local suicide spot, the police decide it's an open-and-shut case. A standard-issue female suicide.
But the residents of Widringham domestic violence shelter where Katie worked don't agree. They say it's murder.
Will you listen to them?
An addictive literary page-turner about a crime as shocking as it is commonplace, KEEPER will leave you reeling long after the final page is turned.
Author Notes
Jessica Moor grew up in southwest London. She received a degree in English literature at Cambridge University before working in the culture and charity sectors and obtained an MA in creative writing from the University of Manchester. She lives in Berlin.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in rural England, Moor's clever debut presents a movingly sympathetic portrait of the victims of domestic violence. The investigation of Katie Straw's apparent suicide takes two policemen, old-school Det. Sgt. Daniel Whitworth and his trainee, Detective Constable Brookes, into the women's shelter where she worked and where the director is protective of the women under her care. Meanwhile, in an alternating narrative, Katie relates the deterioration of her relationship with boyfriend Jamie, who's initially indulgent, if overprotective, then becomes isolating, controlling, and worse. Though the characters hit a lot of the expected tropes, such as the addict with mental health issues, the skittish wife and mother, and the tough feminist, they come through more as archetype than stereotype. Katie's simultaneous identities as protagonist and corpse effectively build a sense of resigned dread, while also helping the reader understand how an intelligent, resourceful woman could become trapped in an abusive relationship. Moor is off to a fine start. Agent: Alexandra Cliff, Peters, Fraser & Dunlop (U.K.). (Mar.)
Guardian Review
The old adage about writing what you know has fallen out of fashion as advice for new writers, but it's served Jessica Moor well in her first novel, Keeper, the story of a murder investigation that centres on a women's refuge. Moor was inspired to write about her experiences of working with victims of domestic violence, and Keeper explores how abuse can rob women of their lives in more ways than one. Katie Straw, a young worker at a refuge in the north-western town of Widringham, is found dead in the river after apparently jumping from the bridge. DS Daniel Whitworth had hoped to reach his imminent retirement "without having to deal with another corpse", though at least this one looks like an open-and-shut suicide, since Katie's boyfriend - the obvious suspect - has an alibi. It's only when Whitworth discovers that Katie was living under a false identity that he realises he might have to start paying attention to the women at the refuge, none of whom - with good reason - has much faith in the law's ability to listen. The novel unfolds using several voices, and across two time frames, which is occasionally confusing. Moor follows the individual stories of the women in the refuge, so different from one another in age and background, but thrown together in uneasy solidarity by the experience that binds them - the violence of a man close to them. There are also flashbacks to Katie's earlier life and her previous relationship with a seemingly perfect man called Jamie. These strands are intercut with chapters following Whitworth's investigation, which are the weakest elements of the novel; the author is less certain of her material here, and Whitworth never quite achieves more than two dimensions as a character. But the novel really comes to life when she tells the women's stories. Katie's relationship with Jamie is chilling in its creep towards coercive control, a form of abuse only recently recognised in law but familiar in fiction and drama, from the 1938 play Gas Light to Louise Doughty's recent novel Platform Seven. Moor skilfully avoids the danger of making the novel too didactic and allows her female characters to speak for themselves. She presents a spectrum of male violence, from a Twitter trolling campaign of violent rape threats against the refuge, to the male detectives' dismissive response, through the various instances of physical and emotional control and ultimately murder. "Every day a hundred and fifty women in this country are turned away from refuges. Two hundred children too." It's an almost off-hand comment made by Val, the director of the women's shelter, but it stayed with me as one of the most frightening moments in this atmospheric, timely debut.
Booklist Review
In bucolic Widringham, England, Katie Straw's body washes onto a riverbank, soaked clean of evidence that could tip investigators toward either murder or suicide. DS Daniel Whitworth and his trainee, DC Brookes, begin their inquiries with Katie's boyfriend, but Whitworth's gut tells him that the man's alibi will stand up. Besides, Whitworth would have to be a fool not to suspect Katie's work at the local women's domestic-violence refuge may provide the motive. Inside the refuge, an unremarkable upper-middle-class home, five women have found protection. They all talk about the man they've seen outside, but none of them claims him as their abuser. The plot thickens when Whitworth learns that Katie Straw is an assumed identity, adding frisson to Katie's own first-person account, which alternates with the main narrative and crackles with tension as she heads toward her death. DS Whitworth's wearily pragmatic investigation, without benefit of the clues unveiled in Katie's story, generates page-turning doubt for the reader on the case's resolution. Moor's confident, well-crafted debut keeps suspense taut while exploring conflicting perceptions of domestic violence and concluding with a chilling twist.
Excerpts
Excerpts
1. Then Katie leans over the bar. She shouts her order in the ear of the bored-looking bartender, whose long ponytail is as pretty and silky as a girl's. She and her friends have only been in the club for an hour; the watery assault on the senses and calculated euphoria have started to wear off, but they aren't yet so drunk that they've been enveloped by generosity and money has stopped mattering. It's a wrench to bellow the order for seven drinks. She's starting to feel a bit sick. She didn't have dinner. Along the bar, a boy is smiling absently at her. He's the kind of boy she'd never normally look at uninvited. His face looks like it was painted in bold brushstrokes - blond hair, almost cherubic features. Yet the soft-full lips and long lashes are assembled against high, flat cheekbones, languid bedroom eyes. He looks like he was composed with a purpose, rather than being, like everyone else, the product of random genetic entropy. He's beautiful. So beautiful that Katie doesn't bother to ask herself if he's her type. He's everyone's type, surely. An objective work of art. He smiles at her more distinctly, his eyes coming into focus. They're green, not the expected blue. They cut through the club-haze, looking straight at her. Or maybe not. Maybe that's just a trick of the light. Katie looks hurriedly away. 'Forty-two pounds, please.' The barman holds out the card machine. En garde. By the time Katie's finished fumbling with her PIN and has returned her debit card to her bra, the beautiful boy is gone. She takes the tray of mojitos to the cramped grouping of leather pouffes where her friends sit, two to a pouffe. She yells above the noise that she's going outside for a minute, and leaves, taking her drink with her. She can sense the disgruntled looks shooting from smoky eyes and catching into her back. She feels guilty. They haven't all been together like this since they graduated and came back home. Most of her friends are on day release from their relationships - serial monogamists, all of them. Seven years at a girls' school will do that to you. ItÕs February. The quiet, wintry air settles KatieÕs senses, a cooling shower on her overheated skin. She drifts towards the edge of the smoking area. Really, it's just a section of alleyway behind the club with a couple of empty glasses on the floor. For years it's been ruled over by the same gregarious Polish bouncer, who used to remember her name. There are no ashtrays or seats, only men in sweaty polyester shirts and squeaky brogues, smoking roll-ups and leaning unnecessarily close to speak to eager-looking girls. Their edges seem blurry against the night, as if they might float away like large, pale balloons. Katie watches it all. No one seems to see her. She has always done this - wandered off by herself on nights out. Her friends are used to it. Perhaps it's an odd thing to do, but it helps her and it doesn't seem to harm anyone else. It soothes ... something. To call the something an anxiety attack would feel too self-absorbed. But there is definitely something in her that needs soothing. Especially today. Being here - being home - drags Katie's heart down, but for now she doesn't have a choice. 'Home' is on the outer fringes of what can reasonably be considered London, though the association is more by map than spirit. It's a twenty-five-minute train journey from the centre of things, although rush hour stretches out that timespan indefinitely. Here, a lone suicide on the train tracks can throw a whole swathe of London's workforce into an agony of grumbling, packed as they are on to the slender margin of a single railway line. People move here for the good schools, and stay because the property prices dart upwards, just as surely as gravity pulls everything else down. Fresh graduates return to their parental homes like flocks of migrating birds. Nothing can go too badly wrong here. It's difficult to leave. Or maybe it's just easy to stay. Being home means being out. Out-out, even though this group of friends made far more sense in the context of ibuprofen in school bags, borrowed class notes, a seemingly endless sense of imprisonment. Being in a bar with them, drinking the alcohol they'd once coveted so distantly, wearing the short skirts they'd been forbidden from - it doesn't feel quite right. But they've all trickled back home, so here they are. Every day they head into the City to populate Excel spreadsheets in different offices, telling themselves that it's somehow connected to their degrees, or else just that it's experience. Going out-out seems like the obvious thing to do with these early pay cheques. Now Christmas is entirely over, they might as well come to terms with the fact that this, for the time being at least, is where they are. Katie doesn't smoke, but she wishes she did. It would give her something to do, and save her from wondering if people think she looks odd out here by herself. 'Hi.' The man who steps in front of her, seemingly from nowhere, is thin and dark, maybe an inch or two taller than her. His build is wiry - he probably weighs less than her - but he seems to take up space in a decisive way that she's immediately drawn to. He looks at her with a directness that makes everyone else's eyes seem veiled. 'I'm Jamie.' He smiles at her, holding out his hand with a formality that she assumes is ironic. 'Hi, Jamie.' She feels like she's being set up for a joke that won't include her. She waits a couple of beats too long before replying. 'I'm Katie.' He doesn't say anything further, but seems to wait, his mouth smiling and his body relaxed, his eyes following the lines of her face as if examining a map. She shifts, her ankles twisting slightly above her pencil heels. She wonders if her face is red. 'I didn't see you inside.' 'No.' 'I wasn't enjoying it much. Came out here. I'm guessing you were feeling something similar?' She nods. 'But you must have been enjoying it a bit, or else you'd leave.' She smiles, because that's an answer in itself to statements like those. 'Maybe going to clubs is worth it,' he says, 'even if only so you can find the people who aren't into clubs either.' She laughs. She doesn't find his comment funny, but he grins as if he's expecting a laugh, so she provides it. They amble in the usual circles of half-drunk conversation. She asks the usual questions. Come here much? What do you think of this DJ? She forgets his answers almost as soon as he gives them, focusing instead on the timbre of his voice. It's deep and strong and very discernibly male, accented a few layers of privilege below her own. 'What do you do?' The question slips out just a second or two before she's thought about it properly. She shrinks inside. That question wasn't on the setlist. She's made this mistake before, and men have looked at her with seasoned disappointment, as if she has just signalled to them a fundamental incompetence at living in the moment. But Jamie doesn't seem to mind. 'I'm a prison officer. Well. Juvenile facility.' He folds his arms. His movements have the studied sharpness of a newly trained actor. 'Yeah?' Maybe this line of conversation is an unexpected rope that she can pull herself along. 'Do you like it?' 'No. But the pay's decent.' 'Yeah.' She laughs. 'I know the feeling.' 'That's life, I guess. But it'll get better, I know it will.' His eyebrows are thick and surprisingly black, which gives an air of resolution to all his expressions. He seems like someone who keeps his ideas hard and simple, like daggers that can be drawn cleanly from their sheaths. Katie likes that. They keep talking. Her attention, such as it is, sways when the beautiful boy from the bar comes outside and stands alone at the other end of the smoking area. Half is caught following the disintegrating column of ash between his long fingers. Maybe Jamie will excuse himself before it burns away completely. But he doesn't, and the beautiful boy doesn't linger, and Katie and Jamie talk on. At a break in the flow - if you could call it a flow - she suggests that they go back in. Jamie frowns. She wonders if she has somehow misread him. But then, to her surprise, he takes her hand and leads her back inside. His grip is warm and dry and firm. As they go down the stairs together, her mind works through a series of possibilities, like trying a set of keys in a lock. She could abandon Jamie now and go back to her friends. She could accept one drink from him and then make an excuse. She could drink with him into the night. Dance with him, her hands resting on his slim shoulders, a fuzzy heat growing between her thighs as she allows herself an occasional glance at the beautiful boy. She could get a taxi home with her friends, like they all agreed at the beginning of the night. She could go home with Jamie. She could take him by the hand and lead him to a dark corner of the alley behind the club. She could sink to her knees before him and let his hands rest on her head as she takes him in her mouth, like he's giving her his blessing for a religion she's not yet sure she believes in. Jamie taps Katie on the elbow. She turns around and he hands her a glass of clear liquid over ice. He didnÕt ask her what she wanted so sheÕs not sure what it is, but she smiles at him and takes a sip, identifying only something strong and chemical. 'I got you a double,' he says. She resolves, before she's too drunk to resolve on anything, that she's going to keep drinking, and that she's going to fuck him. She decides it now, before she can get too caught up in the question of whether or not it's what she really wants. They talk. Or rather, he talks. She says little, focusing on enunciating her few words clearly. She nods and smiles and occasionally lets her hand brush against his thigh. He doesn't seem to understand what she's inviting him into and looks her square in the eye every time they touch. It surprises her how unimpressed he seems. He doesn't appear to particularly enjoy her touch, but he doesn't step away either. After a few minutes he puts an arm around her shoulders, continuing to yell something that she can't hear over the music. Then, without warning, he puts a hand on the back of her head and crushes his mouth against hers. She opens her lips, as if obeying a cue. His tongue makes a measured, inspecting progress around her mouth. Her body seems prepared to let him in. He doesn't keep buying her drinks. He doesn't even keep kissing her for long. Once the terms of their embrace have been set, he goes back to talking. About how he's thinking about going into the army. Katie is sobering steadily, but she doesn't let the ebbing warmth around her eyes force her to consider whether she's making a mistake. Over Jamie's shoulder, she sees her friends swaying towards the exit and disappearing up the stairs. They return a few seconds later, their faces dressed up with expressions of pantomime horror. They gesture at her to join them. She flaps a hand at them behind Jamie's back as if to say, Go on! Her friends leave, eyebrows raised. Katie allows the same hand to slide around Jamie's waist and pull him closer. Jamie frowns at her. 'You know, I'm not that kind of guy.' Her hand, which was sliding down towards his bum, stops abruptly. 'And you don't seem like that kind of girl either.' The pause is filled by the throb of the music. Katie feels a slow cascade of shame burning through her chest. She withdraws her hand, and Jamie catches it. He takes it in both of his own and spreads the fingers, inspecting it carefully as if assessing its worth. He looks at her and smiles. For the first time, he seems really good-looking. 'Let me get to know you. Properly.' Katie doesn't say anything. It didn't feel like the kind of request she needs to answer out loud. 'Can I walk you home?' he asks. He laces his fingers into the hand he's captured. She doesn't want to walk home. She's wearing high heels and it's over a mile. Besides, she isn't sure what they'd talk about on the way. Suggesting they get a cab would feel somehow tone-deaf, and she doesn't think he'll want to sit with her on the night bus, exchanging the banalities of increasing sobriety while she tries to avoid spearing McDonald's chips on her heels. 'Trust me. I'll be worrying about you if you go off by yourself.' She laughs, but he doesn't. 'Look, I'm not going to try it on with you, if that's what you're worrying about. Just want to deliver you to your door, safe and sound.' Why is she making this so much more complicated than it needs to be? If there was anything to worry about with Jamie, then she shouldn't have accepted the drink he gave her. But she did, and there's no harm done. 'I can get a cab,' she says, even though she doesn't mean it. 'Not a chance. Do you know how many women are raped by unlicensed minicab drivers?' She makes to take a little step from him, but his hand is resting in the small of her back and it seems to stop her from moving, though he's not actually exerting any force. She nods, though she's not sure what part she's agreeing to. 'Let me just go to the loo quickly.' He grins and leans forward to kiss her lightly on the forehead. It feels more abruptly intimate than all their previous contact. There is no quickly, of course. Katie stands in the queue for a single bathroom stall, watching as the girls around her, clearly strangers, move into a slurring sisterliness as they wait. One of them puts a little white pill in her mouth. She catches Katie's gaze and holds out her hand. Katie shakes her head. She stands in front of the mirror, looking deep into her own irises. To see if they are any different from usual. But she sees only herself - only the usual blankness. Her eyeliner has flaked off and is lying in the creases of skin underneath her eyes. Her face looks greyish in the bathroom light, underneath the red flush from the hot club. The swaying glow is nearly gone. Excerpted from The Keeper: A Novel by Jessica Moor All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
