Thursday, January 6, 2022

#1: Hello, Transcriber by Hannah Morrissey

A troubled police transcriber in a crime-choked Wisconsin town makes a spate of poor decisions that puts her right in the middle of a murder investigation in Hannah Morrissey's debut Hello, Transcriber.

Morrissey features an unreliable narrator (one of my favorite topics in crime fiction), signaling from the opening pages when the protagonist contemplates jumping off the bridge.  She then starts a destructive affair with a detective just back from suspension, investigating a murder that might involve her duplex neighbor.

The crime aspects hit all the right beats, but it is the characters and setting that really shine.  As opposed to a TV show like Fargo, Morrissey doesn't hold her Midwesterners at an ironic distance; she lives in Wisconsin (and was also a police transcriber), and her characters are flawed and fully-realized.

A good way to start off 2022; recommended for genre fans.  

I checked this out from the Henry County-New Castle Public Library in New Castle, Indiana and read it quickly.

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