CHRIS GILL Boy Fallen. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Set in small-town New Zealand, Boy Fallen is beautifully written and elegantly plotted crime fiction.
Auckland Detective Brooke Palmer returns to her home town of Taonga to support her best friend Lana when the body of Lana’s teenage son is found at the base of the local falls.
Drifting through the terminal like a ghost, she opened the New Zealand Herald app. Waterfall death: Police confirm identity of Taonga teen, the headline read. She wasn’t surprised it had made the national.
Next, she would check the Greymouth Star’s website. Wealthy Wiley teen found dead at Taonga Falls. She traced her eyes across the sentence that ran beneath a picture of Evan – his perfect smile frozen in time: 19 years after the Palmer murder in what locals fear to be a copycat crime.
Nineteen years ago Brooke’s young brother was murdered. But somebody confessed to the killing and was locked up for it. Why on earth would there be a copycat around, after all these years? And is Evan’s death really murder? There is some talk of an accident. Evan was a passionate photographer – maybe he slipped? Maybe he killed himself? But again, why? And what happened to his camera and backpack?
Everything changes for Brooke when she learns of Evan’s new best friends: boys who used to bully him, one the son of the man who killed Brooke’s brother. To her it seems that Evan had made friends for the first time in his life, and because of them he had lost his passion for photography, deserted his long-held plans for the trip of a lifetime, and become even more lost and isolated.
Brooke pulled the photograph close to better see his face, which was almost unrecognisable. Bruised, swollen and cracked open on the left side. His eyes had a creamy gaze. Brooke tried to remember the spark they’d had when she had last seen him.
Boy Fallen is told from two main viewpoints. The first is Brooke Palmer: friend, sister, daughter, police detective, pulled into the investigation when she starts to see all sorts of things that just don’t add up about Evan’s life. Readers see the trauma of families left behind – the pain, the anguish, the questioning – directly through Brooke’s eyes. Boy Fallen shows the complicated experiences of a family trying to comprehend what has happened, the why and how, while dealing with the trauma of knowing all the things their loved one will now never do. It’s skilfully done, and a perspective rarely explored in crime fiction.
The other viewpoint is Evan’s, as he narrates the events leading up to his death. He’s struggling. Bullied and ostracised as a child, he’s a victim of small-town prejudice and envy. Evan and Brooke both come from the ‘wealthy’ side of town – there’s a real divide in this place, and it leads to complicated and uncomfortable community dynamics. Going from outsider to insider with a couple of his past tormentors becoming friends – by way of some pretty blatant bribery with drugs, until he runs out of money – Evan gains friends, but loses his way in the process.
Evan followed the path that led to the skate ramp. He knew that’s where they’d be. It’s where they always used to hang out after school into the late night, and that habit remained even now they had jobs.
Just as he’d predicted, Evan could make out the silhouettes of Mick and Bill as he got closer. Mick was on his board while Bill watched from the edge of the ramp. Flicking his fringe to the side, a street light created an amber haze over Evan, casting his shadow across the pavement. He pulled his backpack off and unzipped the front compartment to check it was still there. It was.
To add to the complications in Evan’s life, he’s gay, strongly attracted to one of his new best friends, and living in a town that already resents him and his family for their difference.
Evan passed the lighter and kept quiet as Bill slid the cigarette between his lips. He imagined what they would feel like. How his tongue would taste.
Boy Fallen is a story about secrets, differences and intolerance. It’s also about families, enduring friendship, love, support and acceptance. It explores the crossovers between all of these elements within the context of the current murder, and the search for a motive and a perpetrator, with an eye always on the past. The murder of Brooke’s brother is a pall that hangs over her own family, and somewhere in that sense of loss and sadness there’s something not right about the conclusion to that case. Whether or not Brooke ever works out what that is isn’t clear to the reader, who may also be wondering why there are two murders of young men in one small town, so far apart in time yet so closely connected via their families.
But it’s also a story of sexual awakening and longing. Evan’s story, as he struggles with his growing attraction to Bill, and the expectations and possible disapproval around declaring he is gay, is beautifully written, and profoundly moving. The pain experienced by too many people just because of differences in orientation, belief or ambition will remain with readers who look beyond Evan’s sad death to his life, and maybe pause for a moment to consider just how brilliant good crime fiction is at shining a light into the darkest corners.
Chris Gill Boy Fallen PRNTD Publishing 2022 380pp $32.99
Karen Chisholm blogs from austcrimefiction.org, where she posts book reviews as well as author biographies.
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