We Begin at the End

A Fiery Teenager Faces Down Tragedy After Tragedy

We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker won the 2021 C.W.A. Gold Dagger.

A mixture of thriller, coming-of-age tale, tear-jerker and western. This novel has it all except subtlety.

Synopsis

Star Radley’s troubles began thirty years ago. Her boyfriend, Vincent King, killed her little sister, Sissy. After being released from prison, King returned to their home town in coastal California.

Star’s teenage daughter, Duchess, is deeply disturbed by King’s reappearance. To protect her mother, she sets off a murderous chain of events that sees her and her younger brother uprooted to Montana.

Five deaths and a thousand miles later, Duchess finally calls a halt to the tragedy that dogs her.

Review

As well as the C.W.A. Gold Dagger, Chris Whitaker’s third novel, won Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, the Ned Kelly Best International Crime Fiction Award and has been translated into 27 different languages. To put the cherry on the cake, Disney recently bought the book rights so they could serialise it.

This is undoubtedly a crime story (there is plenty of blood to bathe in) though it is also a coming-of-age novel. We watch Duchess Radley come to grips with her choices and the life that is unfurling before her and her brother. The plot creeps along, but it will drag you remorselessly with it as you yearn to discover how it will end.

For all its awards, Whitaker’s We Begin at the End is not without its critics. He rams together fragments of sentences to create — depending on the reader — uneasy or poetic prose. You will love it, or it will frustrate you, but it is undoubtedly atmospheric.

They marched the woodland like an army, cops lead, flashlights swept, through the trees was the ocean, a long way down, but the girl could not swim.

His descriptions of the United States are a little stereotypical. Monata has big skies, mountains and snow. California is bathed in sunshine with beaches and million-dollar holiday homes. Whitaker’s use of aptronyms (Dickie Darke – bad guy, Thomas Noble – good guy) is either harmless fun or cliched.

The novel isn’t subtle. However, if you are looking for a thriller laden with emotional drama or want a fiery teenage heroine whose language would make a bouncer blush, this is the book for you. Disney liked it, and so did I. I wonder how they will televise all that swearing.

Excerpt

Duchess would ride with her mother. Walk would bring Robin.

She looked on as the medic worked. He did not try a smile and for that she was grateful. He was balding and sweating and maybe tiring of saving those so determined to die.

For a while they stayed in front of the house, the door falling open to Walk, there like always, his hand on Robin’s shoulder. Robin needed that, the comfort of an adult, the perception of safety.

Across the street drapes moved as shadows passed silent judgement. And then, at the end of the road, she saw kids from her school, peddling hard, faces red. News moved so fast in a town where zoning often made front pages.

The two boys stopped near the cruiser and let their bikes fall. The taller, breathless, a sweep of hair plastered down as he walked slow towards the ambulance.

“Is she dead?”

Duchess lifted her chin, met his eye and held it. “Fuck off.”

The engine rumbled as the door swung closed. Smoked glass made matte of the world.

Cars snaked the turns till they tipped from the hills, the Pacific behind, rocks broke the surface like heads of the drowning.

She watched her street till the end, till trees reach over and met on Pensacola, branches like hands, linked in prayer for the girl and her brother, and the unfurling tragedy that began long before either was born.

We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker