Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane

Title: Highway 13

Author: Fiona McFarlane

Genre: Crime

Publisher: Allen and Unwin

Published: 30^th July 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 320

Price: $32.99

Synopsis: A gripping, provocative work by one of our finest writers, the internationally acclaimed author Fiona McFarlane. In overlapping stories, Highway 13 explores the reverberations of a serial killer’s crimes in the lives of everyday people. A brilliant and illuminating account of loss and its extended echoes across an entire society.

‘Every one of them was a whole world, full of love and curiosity, and every one of these worlds touched hundreds of others.’

A gripping, haunting work about the reverberations of a serial killer’s crimes in the lives of everyday people.

In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged with a series of brutal murders of backpackers along a highway. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims’ families, but its impact travels even further – into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes.

Highway 13 takes murder as its starting point, but it unfolds to encompass much more: through the investigation of the aftermath of this violence across time and place, from the killer’s home town in country Australia to the tropical Far North, and to Texas and Rome, McFarlane presents an unforgettable, entrancing exploration of the way stories are told and spread, and at what cost.

From the acclaimed author of The Sun Walks Down and The Night Guest comes a captivating account of loss and fear, and their extended echoes in individual lives.

~*~

Australia is known for its missing backpackers and serial killers that haunt the outback, particularly the killings in the Belanglo State Forest. The killer’s name and his dumping ground is infamous, ingrained in the Australian psyche. Fiona McFarlane’s new novel is a series of vignettes about similar killings that take place in Barrow State Forest, going between the years and decades to piece the story of the victims, the town, and in turn, those on the peripheral who are fascinated by the case or connected to it in various ways. The police officers who investigated it. The families of the victims. The family of the perpetrator. The podcasters with a morbid fascination with the case. The lone survivor. In Highway 13, Fiona McFarlane has brough all of these elements together in an examination of how stories are told, what stories are told, and how we respond to traumatic events.

Each story, or chapter is set in a different time, either before, after or during the killings. We start in 2008, ten years later after the last murder and arrest, when Lena arrives in town to start a new job.  But it seems that Lena knows something unsettling about the town that has tried to forget about the tragedies of the past. Tried to move on, because they don’t want to be associated with what happened. As each story unfolds, we meet the characters on the periphery of the crimes, some told in first person, others in third, and slowly, they are connected at times, with hints and clues about what is going on throughout coming through – some that felt like they would never be resolved.

One story spoke about a sister trying to convince her younger sister not to marry an abusive man, whilst the first speaks of a body supposedly linked to the serial killer at the heart of these stories, yet there is a later story that hints at a case that is yet to be solved. But because these stories are focused on a specific serial killer, there is a sense that somehow this final body will be connected, though in a realistic twist, there is no connection. No resolution to who this final victim and body really is. This book eerily echoes what happened in the Belanglo State Forest at around the same time, and this is what lingered in the back of my mind as I was reading the book.

It is the way people respond to the crimes in these stories that highlight society’s fascination with true crime and serial killers – particularly the 2028 section – a transcript of a true crime podcast run by two Americans who have a morbid fascination with the crimes and their perpetrator – named in several stories, yet at the same time, not someone many want to talk about. As the threads of the crimes are woven across time and the world – from Sydney to outback Australia, to Rome and Texas, everything comes together, culminating in a story that has the potential to take us back to the beginning. Rather than exploring why the killer does what he does, heading into the psychology of the crime and the acts themselves, Fiona’s exploration of the way we react to crime has resulted in an even more fascinating book that shows the complexities of the human condition and what, or why, people are so fascinated by true crime and serial killers, picking at scabs that people want to forget about, digging up things for books, television shows, and podcasts that keep the story, the crime, and the killer alive for long after he is gone.

When it is the victims who should be remembered – an acknowledgement that is hinted at and haunts the story throughout, wanting people to remember who was truly affected by the awful acts rather than the infamous killer. But most profound, Highway 13 examines the echoes of horrific crimes beyond the people personally affected. Crimes like this permeate society and linger long after arrests and convictions. The early stories also cleverly drop a few red herrings – playing on the tropes of white vans, and knowledge of where to find bodies – the classic sign of picking out a killer used in crime shows, especially when its knowledge that the investigators hold back.

Fiona goes on to subvert these tropes– to show that there could be other explanations that make more sense, that fit what is really happening better. This reminds us that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, that there is often much more to the story than meets the eye. I found the way this examined crime and people’s responses to it depending on their connection or distance from the crimes to be intriguing. Showing that those closer to the crime – family, friends, those living in the town at the time as being deeply affected, fearful and hesitant to talk about it in comparison to years and decades down the track.

It illustrates that removal from the crime through time, place and personal connection can make it morbidly fascinating, but refreshingly, there is a sense in one chapter of acknowledging and naming the victims – and this I think is the message of the book – that the victims should be remembered. The killer should not be immortalised and spoken about in any way. It just gives them power over the people they have killed and hurt, power over society as we remain fascinated by these evil people – people we do not need to immortalise in anyway.

Crime fiction and true crime will always exist though, as a way for people to understand the dark side of society, and what drives people like the killer to do what they do. A balance needs to be struck without immortalising the perpetrators, even when the crimes penetrate a national and at times, international psyche. Fiona has done this exceptionally well, and it was a book that kept me reading as I had to find out how the pieces of the puzzle fitted together in this series of seemingly disparate yet interconnected stories and people.