Kerry Hood was in publishing for many years, working in publicity for several publishers over the time, working on fiction and non-fiction titles. Crime and thrillers have always been those she turns to first, however, and the ones she reads late at night or when she has a quiet moment.
For fans of Frederik Backman, and his A Man Called Ove, here is Sally Hepworth and her Mad Mabel …a delightful novel about an irascible eighty-one year-old, Elsie Fitzpatrick, who is trying to lead a quiet, suburban life on the outskirts of Melbourne.
Elsie has lived almost anonymously as the curmudgeon of Kenny Street for nigh on sixty years, and so far, her secret has remained undetected. Daphne, her best friend since childhood, knows all Elsie’s backstory, her doubts, fears and views on the now, and probably the hereafter too.
The cracks appear when Elsie’s next-door neighbour is found dead, and she is heard to inadvisably admit that she thought he was a major pain in her life and could well do without him. After his death, strange messages start arriving, and undesirable rumours start floating around the cul-de-sac. The police pointedly interview her, and the rumours strengthen …
Elsie Fitzpatrick is outed as Mad Mabel – the woman, or child as she had been, who had, strangely, was around when people close to her started dying.
Elsie is very tall, broad and unstoppable (when her irritatingly aged bones don’t ache too much). She thought she had managed to hide her past successfully. For instance, she puts up with Persephone, the seven year-old daughter of a hard-working single mother close by, who wants to ‘interview’ her about being old, she is forever trying to palm her off on one or other of her neighbours and doesn’t pull punches on her opinion about children, anyone or anything. She is grumpy, frosty and has a viper’s sarcasm.
She is also a quite brilliant, funny and openly honest creation who will melt your heart. As the novel progresses, and more answers to Mabel’s early life and current situation seep into sight, the more understandable she becomes, and the more the reader aches for her – from the childhood spent with her appalling father and disintegrating mother, to the people she is accused of killing. Gradually her story unspools. As the youngest person ever to be convicted of murder in Australia, it is hard for her neighbours to remain loyal to her, but slowly, slowly they come to realise who the real person is living in Kenny Lane is – Mad Mabel or Elsie Fitzpatrick, the hard-hearted murderer, or the old woman just longing for friends and friendship…
