Penance

by Kanae Minato · 2017

Penance is a chilling psychological thriller set in the fictional Yorkshire seaside town of Crow‑on‑Sea. Ten years after sixteen‑year‑old Joan Wilson is brutally set alight by three of her schoolmates, journalist Alec Z. Carelli assembles a "definitive account" of the murder, drawing on interviews, archival research and even correspondence with the killers. As Carelli pieces together the town’s trauma, the novel probes gender, power, violence, media obsession with true‑crime and the unreliable nature of storytelling, while also exposing the dark undercurrents of adolescent cruelty and coming‑of‑age dynamics.