Book Review: Little Deaths

In mid-sixties Queens, two small children disappear from their apartment – later found dead, presumed murdered. Their single mother, Ruth, is criticised by police and public alike for not performing her grief in the right way. She’s too beautiful, too sexy – a cocktail waitress who drinks too much and has had many lovers. Both the cops and the journalists are convinced that she killed her own children to prevent her ex-husband from getting custody of them.

Inspired by a true story, this is an engrossing literary crime novel that immerses you in the time and place, and skilfully portrays the fraught relationship between justice and the media. The court of public opinion has condemned the apparent femme fatale long before she’s imprisoned, while insights into Ruth’s life present us with a woman who feels both horribly guilty at not being able to protect her children and who did, nonetheless, resent the drudgery of working motherhood. She is cold to an outsider but an understandable, if flawed (hurrah!) woman to the reader. This is Flint’s debut novel and further inspired-by-true-crime stories with ‘unorthodox’ women at their centre are reportedly on the way.