Highway Thirteen by Fiona McFarlane
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (August 2024)
Reviewed by Blu Gilliand
Is it really a serial killer book if the serial killer is absent from the book?
That’s the question I had in mind when I picked up Highway Thirteen to review. I’d been led to believe — by the jacket copy, by the press materials, and by a few advance reviews — that the focus was not on the killer, but instead on the victims, family members, acquaintances, and curious parties caught in his orbit. That was all true. It was my assumption that the killer was absent that was incorrect.
Highway Thirteen does not focus on the killer. There are no stalking scenes, bloody battles, or gory kills. There’s not an origin story. There’s no description of a mask, no rundown of the killer’s arsenal of weapons.
What Fiona McFarlane gives us in place of those slasher/serial killer tropes is a series of short stories that examine the various waves rippling out from the twelve murders (and one attempted murder) carried out by an infamous Australian madman.
The stories bounce around the timeline, covering periods before, during, and after his spree. We meet former neighbors. We meet his mother. We meet a couple of podcasters re-telling his story. We meet an actor charged with portraying him in a streaming series.
McFarlane’s killer hovers over these stories like a storm cloud. Tension, which you’d normally expect in a story about a serial killer, may be absent, but there’s plenty of regret and sorrow to go around, all of it traced back to one man’s unthinkable actions.
McFarlane provides a strong cast of characters to fill out the stories and to bring the emotions home. Highway Thirteen is at turns eerie, unsettling, and profoundly sad, but it’s not without glimmers of hope. It’s certainly well worth your time.
