Say Goodbye to the Boys

October 28, 2013
Jones’s debut, a serial killer yarn based on notes left behind by her late father, Stead Jones (Make Room for the Jester), vividly evokes a small post-WWII Welsh community, but the mystery component is lacking. Much of Maelgwyn is in shabby condition, full of “windows without curtains, empty houses, scars of war everywhere in spite of the fact that not a shot had been fired at it, not a bomb dropped.” The dead-end nature of Maelgwyn and its many failures are exemplified by its market hall, built without a public staircase to its upper floors. Against this dour backdrop, a murderer begins claiming lives—one victim tossed from the top of the market hall, another strangled and left on the lap of a statue of a king. No character, including narrator Philip Roberts, leaves much of a mark, and the patched-together denouement doesn’t follow logically from what’s come before.