howdy doody

on vacation

slim, attractive dreadlocked babe with a fun sticky-out

bellybutton, likes rabbit fur

forward this email to ten friends

each of those friends must forward it to ten friends

maybe one of those friends of friends of friends will be

one of my friends

if this email ends up in my inbox within a week I wont

slit the bitchs throat

can you afford not to send this on to ten friends?

So begins Richard Jay Parker’s inventive crime novel about the self-styled ‘Vacation Killer’; a serial killer for the twenty-first century who sends out a chain email before sending the victim’s boiled jawbone to the police. So far, ten people have been murdered, seemingly at random and across the world, ranging from America to Germany and the UK. Leo Sharpe’s wife disappears during a pre-Christmas lunch and a frantic search ensues. A chain email is sent but nothing happens. Eventually, with no new leads, the search is scaled down and Leo begins to wonder whether “so many people forwarded the Laura email that this time it had actually got back to the sender.”

Parker keeps us on our toes, throwing in red herrings and plot twists galore as we follow Leo and his attempts to find the answers to Laura’s disappearance. The most prominent amongst the cranks and lunatics claiming to be the Vacation Killer is an American named Bookwalter, who pollutes the internet with gruesome details about the victims. Leo’s attention is hooked when he finds a photograph of Laura on Bookwalter’s website and they begin to exchange emails on a regular basis.

In places, in this uneven novel, Parker falls into that new-author trap of telling us too much of what’s happening instead of showing by letting the action unfold and throughout, there’s an annoying use of the pluperfect tense that works against the tight plot and fast pace (“Leo had heard about the other emails that had been sent. It had been all over the TV news”). But there are good things too. For example, it’s a deft touch to show Leo’s rising desperation through his child-like reliance on superstition: “if it doesn’t drip on the floor, Laura is still alive”; “if they ring off before I can reach it, Laura is alive”.

In Stop Me Parker taps into public concerns about using the Internet. We are reminded constantly through hysterical headline-grabbing stories how, with the click of a button, electronic junk can bring down information networks, and how social media sites are a potential death-trap for the too trusting. Every day, when we log in, we need to believe that the people we come into contact with online are who they claim to be, that there is no nasty surprise lurking behind the gravatar of a pretty, blonde 22 year old art student. Parker astutely injects believability into the way that Leo’s character is compelled to follow-up every lead, to track every little piece of information about Laura, even if that means looking at Bookwalter’s website and communicating with him. We all know that it’s going to end badly but can’t tear away from the impending crash.

The website for Stop Me is very slick; atmospheric music and a disturbing email campaign, it’s cleverly designed to play on the same fears that haunt this compelling debut novel.

Janette Currie runs a literary consultancy. Her website can be found at www.janettecurrieconsultancy.co.uk.

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