With A Level dedicating an entire paper over to the crime genre, diving into the ocean that is psychopathy during the Christmas holidays seemed entirely academically laudable. During the season of goodwill a little dive into Skuse’s murky waters was just what I needed.

It never ceases to surprise people that one of my favourite genres of fiction is psychological thriller (think ‘Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’ and ‘Silence Of The Lambs’). I guess that it’s being female and relatively small that creates the impression I should be happily swimming in the shallows of the latest Mills and Boon or Penny Vincenzi, making my particular passion for darker, criminal, briny depths worrying if not entirely disturbing.

In this sense, ‘Sweet Pea’ is an ocean I was happy to fully submerge myself into.

The unapologetic nature of the narrator’s brokenness, in fact her pleasure in its outworking almost makes her voice, while murderous, hate-filled and arrogant, remarkably refreshing. Most discomfitingly, she’s relatable. Very relatable.

Rhiannon’s thoughts regularly echo our own, with her ‘friends’ or PICSOs as she calls them frequently pleading for the death of some character or other.

And we agree. It’s hard not to.

Whilst her tragic backstory brings a sense of history to her character, Rhiannon stands alone as a persona one can feel no sympathy for. She doesn’t demand it, she doesn’t want it and she doesn’t deserve it.

The way in which she revels in her psychopathy, in her crimes and her general distate for all humanity brings a strange sort of twisted joy to the narrative.Though she is fuelled by a hatred rarely surpassed by characters in fiction (other than perhaps Iago), her delight in it makes it a pleasure to read. She’s almost cheering.

It’s disturbing.

 

Not one for the faint-hearted, nor one for younger readers but, for those with a penchant for the macabre, definitely worth a read as a slightly different journey on familiar seas.