Suzy and her brother, Lim, live with their abusive mother in a town where the stars don’t shine at night. Once the abuse becomes too much to handle, the two siblings embark on a sordid cross-country murder spree beginning with their mom. As the murder tally rises, Suzy’s mental state spirals into irredeemable madness.“A debut with the power of a nuclear bomb. Ranks alongside Jack Ketchum’s The … Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door and J. F. Gonzalez’s Survivor.” — Brian Keene, author of The Rising
”… could easily become one of the most talked about novels of 2020.” — Waylon Jordan, iHorror.com
“I’ve taken in a lot of rather dark literature over the years, but I can unequivocally say True Crime is the most disturbing book I’ve ever read.” — Jeremy Dick, HorrorGeekLife.com
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When a debut release by an author gets as much love as a book like ‘True Crime’ does, you say to yourself ‘self, we should read this, yeah?’ So, Steve answered himself (god how lame is this!) and snagged this book from Amazon and dove in!
‘True Crime’ is a two-part story; a before and an after. It is peppered throughout with some back story, but for the most part, we follow our characters along in the before and the after.
The before opens the story up. We are introduced to brother and sister, Lim and Suzy, trying to survive life with an abusive mother. We see just how awful the mother is to these teens and how they try and cope with her actions.
Then one day, Suzy snaps and after dealing with their mom, the two take off. They flee from their past but also from the knowledge that they’ve stepped over a line – and that they both enjoyed it.
They then begin a crime spree filled with some fine moments of the ‘ole ultra-violence.’ Most of the moments that follow happen with little rhyme or reason and at times I didn’t fully grasp the ‘why.’ Kolesnik lays it out well, but a few of the moments still didn’t click with me.
The after, or part two of the book follows what happens with Suzy once their spree ends.
I wished for a bit more here, especially with Suzy. Some of this was suspension of reality – if we are to believe the court systems in the world of this book, they believed Lim kidnapped Suzy and that she wasn’t a willing and active participant, even though Suzy says she was involved. We also need to suspend the belief that Suzy is then sent into a foster home and doesn’t appear to be involved in any sort of counselling.
This was my one issue with this book. I didn’t mind that the start appeared to be a brother and sister version of Natural Born Killers. Those can be completely fun, bonkers books. My issue was the lack of ‘real world’ intervention in the second part.
I enjoyed the work-life of Suzy afterwards, seeing her interact with the creepy friend of the owner and how she felt both stuck being this guy’s only friend but also longing for interaction from someone who had similar thoughts as she did.
Overall, this book was a lot of fun, and it’s a great debut. As I said, I wished for a little bit more in the ‘real world’ stuff, but it wasn’t a detriment to the story (although it may have helped Suzy process some stuff better!).
I can see why so many folks have been raving about this one! Definitely give it a read when you can!
In the build-up to it’s release, I’ve seen a number of comparisons being made between Samantha Kolesnik’s debut and Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door. It’s a fair comparison, and although True Crime doesn’t cut as bone-deep as Ketchum’s justifiably highly regarded emotional and psychological assault against its readers, Kolesnik certainly knows how to worm around a reader’s brain and make their soul ache.
Right from its opening pages, the author lets you know what kind of book True Crime is and the space her lead character, Suzy, inhabits in the world. Suzy is a victim seeking escape from the predations of her mother, until she finally snaps and settles the score. She and her older, far more imposing, brother then hit the road, leaving in their wake a trail of bodies and carnage.
Kolesnik pulls no punches in her portrayals of some truly awful, broken people and the degradation they impose upon humanity. Having directed several short films previously, the author uses her words here like a camera, setting up scenes and placing the lens close to study every intimate detail, whether you want to see them or not.
Suzy is a wonderfully realized, three-dimensional girl trapped and attempting to surface in this twisted coming of age story. She is seeking to find her place in the world, rebelling against her victim-hood even as she acknowledges that she’s always somebody’s subservient dog. She’s meek in the face of Mama’s anger, and, later, follows behind an ex-convict who routinely masturbates in front of her, simply because it’s what she has been trained to do. Violence is oftentimes her only recourse, the only method she has to finding some degree of control over her own life, and it calls to mind questions of nature versus nurture. Is she a compulsive reader of the gaudy True Crime magazine and its lurid depictions of crime scenes and corpses because she herself is a victim, or because she hopes to be one day sensationalized in similar fashion as either a killer or victim, or both? Did Mama’s abuse and sexual assaults and Suzy’s years of objectification make her cold blooded, or would she have grown up to be a damaged survivor in any circumstance?
In some ways, Suzy is the antithesis to The Girl Next Door’s Meg, a What If? story about the abused girl who makes her way out into the world but only knows pain and suffering, and how to inflict it. A girl who knows and understands violence better than she understands her own self, and hopes that one can help her learn about and define the other.
True Crime is a shocking and potent debut, and Kolesnik is one hell of a powerful writer. If you’re looking for The Next Big Name in psychological horror, start here.
In True Crime, author Samantha Kolesnik weaves a unique tale that is tragic, deeply unsettling, but utterly humane. Yes, it gets gruesome at times, but the reader is allowed to slip under the skin of the protagonist, Suzy, in a sly way that resonates despite the action that plays out. This will become a classic of the horror genre, mark my words.
True Crime is an incredibly bleak and riveting tale about what happens to those who suffer at the hands of abuse and the mental anguish that ensues. Samantha Kolesnik wrote an emotionally charged debut novel that was deeply captivating. This is an author that will remain on my radar simply because you can tell that she pours her soul into her writting. This reader anxiously awaits the authors next book and the emotional trauma that awaits when it comes.
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Fast, lean and dark, this is a brutal story about the long-reaching ramifications of abuse, told in a darkly pastoral style. It’s the sort of novel that feels shaved to the bone, giving every sentence an impact. Highly recommended, but be warned this one really does not shy from darkness. If it’s light and fluffy you want, this ain’t it.
I devoured this novella in two sittings. A creepy, atmospheric opening which had me asking lots of questions and built as the story progressed.
I think perhaps my years spent teaching in an underprivileged part of the country made me connect with the characters immediately. I recognized how such children are deprived in so many ways, including being robbed of a childhood. I despised the mother, understood Lim’s emotional withdrawal from the world, and felt Suzy’s plight keenly. It’s impossible to call her a likable character because she isn’t. What she is, though, is a victim of circumstance and that creates empathy.
There were tender moments, such as those between Suzy and her dog, Moses, which describe Suzy’s psychology more than a long description could. And the scene with the pigs, too… somehow more poignant than if the victims had been human. The way in which Suzy becomes desensitized to violence, disappointed almost, when there is less drama than she hoped for. (I don’t want to give too much detail here because of spoilers.)
Suzy’s first person voice is powerful, the dialogue authentic, and she brought to mind one particular child I taught who suffered a similar upbringing. The seeking out of negative attention, because at least it’s better than none at all.
There are so many snippets I could quote, but I have to mention one or two lines to exemplify how the author leaves you thinking… “The memory raped long after the person stopped.” And this one… “But I wasn’t a Builder. I was a maggot, like Mr Lorry had said. And I knew other maggots like Milton. And although we couldn’t make anything beautiful, we did know how to feed and multiply.”
The story brought to mind Bonnie and Clyde and Tarantino’s Natural born Killers, and yet it was original.
Things that particularly stood out…
-Excellent character building
-Incredible sense of location that stayed with me
-Little passages of brilliance, too many to quote
-Insightful, especially with regards to how women are treated by some men
-Imagery used sparingly and for greatest impact
-A sense of knowing when something is best left unsaid, not described, so that the reader might infer his or her own conclusions and fill in the gap for themselves. This is a skill many authors lack
Don’t hesitate to read.
Will go straight to my Top Reads of 2021 shelf!
This was….God, I don’t even know. It scared the shit out of me. As a very close follower of True Crime and one of those people who knows facts about serial killers….I’m wondering had circumstances been different…could I have been more like the main character?
This had some pretty powerful triggers for me. Animal abuse especially, but it played a part in showing humanity where otherwise their might not have been.
This was terrifying novella that will be on my mind for a long time. Whether I like it or not. When something sticks like that it’s obviously going to be 5 stars all the way!
“True Crime” is terrific from beginning to end. It is terrific in that there is poetic nuance as well as a necessity to the physical, psychological, and sexual violence that serves as the kindling which sets off this explosive debut novel.
It too is terrific in the oft-overlooked root meaning of the word. “True Crime’s” pages are filled with terror spawned in an abusive household of a special sort (but not rare enough, unfortunately). That is what makes “True Crime” an especially necessary read. And to twist the knife stabbed into the reader who serves as something of a kidnapping victim or a helpless bystander, Suzy, the narrator, reminds us how “There was no evil in the world that was not man’s work. And there was no man in the world that was not woman’s work.”
The above is one of a multitude of sobering assertions found throughout “True Crime’s” pages which will cause the reader to pause, and hopefully remember to breathe. The action that propels you from page one to 143 can best be equated to a mashup of Stephen King’s “The Body” and Eric Bress’s “The Butterfly Effect” meets Quentin Tarantino’s “Natural Born Killers.” Fun for the whole family. There’s a dash of “Of Mice and Men” sprinkled into the mix as well, but that is the result of the empathy Samantha Kolesnik forces you to feel for Suzy and her big brother, Lim, through a masterfully crafted brutal tale of love and deceit.
Confronting and powerful, this is a great novella.
True Crime is a story of a disturbed sibling relationship centered around unmerciful death. Samantha Kolesnik’s approach to writing captures an all too real orchestral symphony of brutality. Readers will relish in this painting of repulsive rot presented by the author…in a good way.