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A review by cardica
Double Lives by Kate McCaffrey
4.0
Double Lives is a harrowing, insightful look into the parasociality of crime-media, of both the true and fictional varieties. With a delightfully simple and thoroughly explored core theme, the hybrid prose and audio-transcript style creates an immersive investigation of what it means to 'enjoy' crime stories.
When the war council at Perth Radio Western is summoned, to produce a ratings-winning serial for the drive-time slot, Amy Rhinehart's 'Strange Crime' is the chosen warrior. What sets this serial apart is the catch - the investigation is ongoing, and listeners can participate and contribute week after week. The chosen case for season 1 reconstructs the all-too-tidy murder of a trans woman. Her boyfriend confessed immediately, and didn't take an easy legal loophole that would have turned his life-sentence to almost nothing. It echoes a case decades past, putting Amy and her team of producers on the prowl for what the official investigation - or lack thereof, missed.
We've all read the story of the open-and-shut case by the police, we know how this one plays out. There's a secret alternate explanation they don't want you to know! The thing Amy can't quite understand, is why nobody is speaking up. The detectives, the lawyers, even the alleged culprit all agree it's that simple, but surely that's too good to be true. Careful wishes, and all that.
Exploring touchy subjects of drugs, sexuality, transgenderism, religion, and the implicit relationship in crime-media, Kate's writing deftly controls the switches between standard prose and transcripts of the program. I should warn - if you don't find the transcript style appealing, I don't think the book does much to persuade you otherwise. Transcripts inherently turn some of the evocative flavour of prose into slightly blunt descriptors, but as someone buried in transcripts all the time for work, I felt right at home with the composed way Kate writes them. The characters, especially Amy, have a candid credibility in how they respond to the evolving narrative of 'Strange Crime' in both writing formats, and there's a few zinger lines that I bet at least one podcast-hosting reader is going to wish they could steal (it couldn't be me).
It's always delightful when a novel poses you a concept and then spends the next two-hundred some pages changing your mind about it, especially when they do it without you even realising it, and that was my experience with Double Lives. Even as the host of a radio-crime-fiction program, this book, (almost) speaking about my profession, had something enjoyably new and noteworthy to say about it. That said, I do think Amy Rhinehart should be committed to a ward for agreeing to produce a show this thoroughly researched and legally ambiguous on a weekly basis.
For our program, I read this alongside [a:Margery Allingham|30748|Margery Allingham|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1364808928p2/30748.jpg]'s [b:Cargo of Eagles|383187|Cargo of Eagles (Albert Campion Mystery, #19)|Margery Allingham|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1295948023l/383187._SY75_.jpg|74134], and I really enjoyed their companion themes of the courier venturing to the outside of a community buried in secret misdeeds, and how both question their protagonists' connection to their case, a case, of course, of Double Lives.
Thank you to Echo Publishing via DMCPR for the ARC.
When the war council at Perth Radio Western is summoned, to produce a ratings-winning serial for the drive-time slot, Amy Rhinehart's 'Strange Crime' is the chosen warrior. What sets this serial apart is the catch - the investigation is ongoing, and listeners can participate and contribute week after week. The chosen case for season 1 reconstructs the all-too-tidy murder of a trans woman. Her boyfriend confessed immediately, and didn't take an easy legal loophole that would have turned his life-sentence to almost nothing. It echoes a case decades past, putting Amy and her team of producers on the prowl for what the official investigation - or lack thereof, missed.
We've all read the story of the open-and-shut case by the police, we know how this one plays out. There's a secret alternate explanation they don't want you to know! The thing Amy can't quite understand, is why nobody is speaking up. The detectives, the lawyers, even the alleged culprit all agree it's that simple, but surely that's too good to be true. Careful wishes, and all that.
Exploring touchy subjects of drugs, sexuality, transgenderism, religion, and the implicit relationship in crime-media, Kate's writing deftly controls the switches between standard prose and transcripts of the program. I should warn - if you don't find the transcript style appealing, I don't think the book does much to persuade you otherwise. Transcripts inherently turn some of the evocative flavour of prose into slightly blunt descriptors, but as someone buried in transcripts all the time for work, I felt right at home with the composed way Kate writes them. The characters, especially Amy, have a candid credibility in how they respond to the evolving narrative of 'Strange Crime' in both writing formats, and there's a few zinger lines that I bet at least one podcast-hosting reader is going to wish they could steal (it couldn't be me).
It's always delightful when a novel poses you a concept and then spends the next two-hundred some pages changing your mind about it, especially when they do it without you even realising it, and that was my experience with Double Lives. Even as the host of a radio-crime-fiction program, this book, (almost) speaking about my profession, had something enjoyably new and noteworthy to say about it. That said, I do think Amy Rhinehart should be committed to a ward for agreeing to produce a show this thoroughly researched and legally ambiguous on a weekly basis.
For our program, I read this alongside [a:Margery Allingham|30748|Margery Allingham|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1364808928p2/30748.jpg]'s [b:Cargo of Eagles|383187|Cargo of Eagles (Albert Campion Mystery, #19)|Margery Allingham|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1295948023l/383187._SY75_.jpg|74134], and I really enjoyed their companion themes of the courier venturing to the outside of a community buried in secret misdeeds, and how both question their protagonists' connection to their case, a case, of course, of Double Lives.
Thank you to Echo Publishing via DMCPR for the ARC.