Amy thinks that Jeff, her prison penpal, will be
inside for several years. He lied - his release date is imminent. She believes
that he’s a gentle, misunderstood young man. She’s wrong - he’s a killer who
plans to kill again. Will she realise that she’s being stalked by a sadistic
psychopath? Or will she, too, endure a slow, painful death?
Paperback original published February 2007 by Snowbooks. |
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Men behind bars can make excellent letter writers for
female pen pals. Occasionally these relationships continue successfully when
the inmate is released, but more often the woman ends the relationship when
the man is due for parole as she wants the romantic ideal of a relationship
without the day to day reality.
Sob Story examines what happens when Amy, a shy student who has just started a
course at the University of Dundee, starts to correspond with Jeff, an inmate
at Maidstone Prison. They’re both trapped by circumstances but have very
different ways of dealing with this. Amy tries to control her world by
restricting what she eats and by exercising excessively. Jeff’s solution is to
indulge his strangling fetish and ultimately kill. Released on parole, he
immediately travels to Dundee to surprise his innocent but naïve penpal - and
suddenly she, and every other woman who crosses his path, is in jeopardy...
SOB STORY reviews:
Insecure and socially awkward Amy Bartlett finds it
hard to adjust to her first term at Dundee University. Then she meets Barbara,
an older women on a related course who persuades her she'd be the perfect pen
pal for son Jeff. He's a sweet and sensitive boy after all, but languishing in
gaol, the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Barbara doesn't know her son
very well at all, however. In reality, Jeff is a highly disturbed sexual
predator with a throttling obsession who lives to target the vulnerable.
Davis really knows how to keep the reader engrossed. Her latest is a real page
turner, coming at you with a ruthless pace generated by brutally short
chapters and shifting character perspectives. These neatly trace Amy's failure
to connect with her fellow students and flatmate and her growing reliance upon
the companionship of Jeff's letters, letters tailored very much to what he
thinks she wants to hear. All he can think about, meanwhile, is grooming the
girl into his newest sex-slave in time for parole. And to Amy's cost, that day
is far closer than Jeff has let on.
Anyone familiar with the author's true crime accounts and other novels will
know they are informed by the pathology underpinning extreme violence and Sob
Story is no exception. For all his monstrous behaviour Jeff too is a victim,
of childhood abuse, and this element goes some way in filling out a character
to which most will find it hard to relate. The book is also a subtle
exploration of the psychology of women who enter into contact with men behind
bars, the loneliness – which Davis brilliantly evokes – and emotional
immaturity driving them, the self-deceptions required to maintain these
relationships despite all good advice. An intelligent and exciting read, Sob
Story will have you hooked. White knuckle stuff.
- Jack Lawrence,
Forum magazine website.
Amy Bartlett is a shy nineteen-year-old from Aberdeen,
starting university in Dundee. She is also on the road to a serious eating
disorder, and her fear of food compounds her shyness: Amy is unable to make
friends and avoids social gatherings where she will be tempted by food.
As a result, she’s just the kind of girl who is lonely, and needy enough to
start writing to a prisoner. After all, she’s met Jeff’s mother, and she’s a
nice lady, and says Jeff didn’t do anything serious, so what’s the harm?
Jeff is one seriously disturbed individual. In prison for almost strangling
his ex-girlfriend to death, he’s been able to play the model prisoner while
still feeding his own twisted fantasies and, literally, getting away with
murder.
What Amy doesn’t know is that Jeff is getting out of prison soon, and he has
her address…
This is a book with all the hallmarks to make it my kind of read. It’s dark,
disturbing, set in Scotland (one of my favourite places on earth) and Davis
has an impressive list of publishing credits, including true crime and
fiction.
There is a lot of time spent in character development, and a long time is
spent setting the stage for what you know is inevitable. It was a bit of a
slow start but once the story clicked for me I couldn’t put it down. Although
you feel you know what’s going to happen Davis keeps you guessing about the
outcome and throws in some nice twists. This book is not meant to be an
action-packed thriller, but it is an intense psychological thriller that
builds up to a nail-biting level of suspense that kept me turning the pages
late into the night.
I think the reason Sob Story required a bit of an adjustment was that
it was such an intense psychological study. In a way, this book is far more
about twisted minds. Amy’s social and eating problems, and her resulting
therapy, are well developed. A person could learn as much about what starts
some girls down the road to anorexia as they could about what contributes to
sexual deviancy through Jeff. The characters are completely believable.
This book could also serve as a commentary on how the criminal justice system
is failing to properly identify dangerous offenders who pose a risk to others
if released. It underscores the fact that not enough is being done to properly
screen these people when they’re sentenced.
Davis doesn’t pull any punches and weaves a convincing tale that is
frighteningly believable. Anyone who likes dark psychological thrillers should
check out her work – this is an author I definitely want to see more from.
-
Sandra Ruttan, Spinetingler magazine website.