Little Deaths

Starred review from October 10, 2016
One of New York City’s classic tabloid crime cases—cocktail waitress Alice Crimmins’s controversial conviction for the 1965 murders of her two young children—becomes the springboard for British author Flint’s affecting, achingly beautiful debut. That Ruth Malone, a separated single mom, leads an active sex life, including trysting with married men while her five-year-old Frankie Jr. and four-year-old Cindy remain home alone, locked in their bedroom, makes her the only suspect police seriously look into after her estranged husband reports the youngsters missing. And yet the deeper that fledgling crime reporter Pete Wonicke digs into the story, the more he becomes convinced that while Ruth may be guilty of many things, killing her kids isn’t among them. Eschewing easy answers or Perry Mason miracles, Flint focuses squarely on Ruth’s stiflingly straitened life in working-class Queens, close enough to gaze at the bewitching lights of Manhattan yet distant enough to feel marooned in another galaxy. This stunning novel is less about whodunit than deeper social issues of motherhood, morals, and the kind of rush to judgment that can condemn someone long before the accused sees the inside of a courtroom. Agent: Jo Unwin, Jo Unwin Literary Agency (U.K.).

January 15, 2017
One hot summer in New York, 1965, a sexy, troubled cocktail waitress is suspected of murdering her children.Flint's debut novel begins in a prison cell, where Ruth Malone struggles to awaken from a dream of her old apartment building in Queens--putting on her makeup in the bathroom, smoking her first cigarette of the day, "the blast of Gina's radio overhead, Tony Bonelli's heavy tread on the stairs....Nina Lombardo yelling at her kids next door." This is where it happened, where one morning in July she unlatched her children's bedroom door to find them gone. Cindy and Frankie, ages 4 and 5, not in bed with a storybook, not snuggled together under their blue blanket, but disappeared. Within days their bodies are found in a dump and a nearby woods, strangled, decomposed. Having heard the story from Ruth's point of view, the reader is assured of her innocence, though a self-righteous belief in her guilt is shared by many of her neighbors, the media, and, most importantly, the lead detective on the case, who is absolutely determined to "crack that whore." She is believed to be a bad mother, a woman who goes to too many bars, sees too many men, drinks too much booze, a woman who has recently dumped her husband even though he was ready to forgive her for cheating on him. Her only significant ally is a young newspaperman who at first sees the case as the key to launching his career but becomes so obsessed that he quits the paper to try to prove Ruth's innocence. Since we know where it begins, it seems we know how it must turn out--but there are a few surprises left. Sharply rendered literary noir, compelling enough to forgive a slightly left-field resolution.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2016
In 1965 working-class Queens, NY, two children go missing and are later found strangled not far from home. The police immediately suspect their mother, Ruth Malone, single and working long hours as a cocktail waitress, whose tiny skirts and penchant for bourbon scream "bad mom." Newbie tabloid reporter Pete Wonicke hopes to make his name by covering the case, but the more he digs, the more he doubts what he's being told. A BookExpo America buzz book, this debut psychological thriller was a huge hit at both BEA and ALA.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 1, 2016
Although no formal acknowledgement is made in the text, this compelling crime-fiction debut is clearly based on the Alice Crimmins case. The Medea of Kew Gardens Hills was convicted and served a prison sentence for the 1965 deaths of her children in New York City. Same place, same time: a Queens neighborhood close enough to the World's Fair to hear the drone. Ruth Malone, a single mother working as a cocktail waitress, awakens one morning to discover that her two small children are gone. Later that day, her daughter's body is found in an abandoned lot nearby, and, 10 days after that, her son's badly decomposed body is found not far from the fairgrounds. Ruth becomes the prime suspect. The police have decided she is a bad mother who wanted to get rid of her kids, and she is portrayed as a promiscuous femme fatale in the press. She is eventually convicted, and the reader shares the desolation of her prison stay and learns along with her the chilling truth about the murders. The closing scene is a jaw-dropper, reminiscent of Minette Walters' classic The Sculptress (1993). This is absolutely absorbing literary crime fiction, perfect for fans of Megan Abbott and Sarah Waters. Look forward to more from the gifted Flint, who has revealed in interviews that she has been a reader of true crime since childhood.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)