Holly Jackson - Good Girl, Bad Blood – The Sunday Times bestseller and sequel to A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

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Good Girl, Bad Blood – The Sunday Times bestseller and sequel to A Good Girl's Guide to Murder: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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The highly-anticipated and brilliantly crafted crime-thriller sequel to the NYT bestselling and no.1 debut of 2019, A GOOD GIRL'S GUIDE TO MURDERA GOOD GIRL'S GUIDE TO MURDER ISTHE WINNER OF THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS' CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020 ANDSHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES CHILDREN'S BOOK PRIZE 2020Nail-biting, taut and pacy. Jackson a homegrown thriller writer to watch. GuardianPip Fitz-Amobi is not a detective anymore.With the help of Ravi Singh, she released a true-crime podcast about the murder case they solved together last year. The podcast has gone viral, yet Pip insists her investigating days are behind her.But she will have to break that promise when someone she knows goes missing. Jamie Reynolds has disappeared but the police won’t do anything about it. And if they won’t look for Jamie then Pip will, uncovering more of her town’s dark secrets along the way& and this time EVERYONE is listening. But will she find him before it’s too late?Perfect for fans of One of Us Is Lying, Eva Dolan, C L Taylor, We Were Liars and RiverdalePraise for A Good Girl's Guide to Murder:'A taut, compulsively readable, elegantly plotted thriller' – Guardian'A fiendishly-plotted mystery that kept me guessing until the very end.' – Laura Purcell, bestselling author of The Silent Companions'There is a lot to really enjoy in this story and there is great energy to the writing, as well as some fine characterization' – Peter James, award-winning and no.1 bestselling crime thriller author of Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series'Twisty, compulsive and so, so clever' – Savannah Brown, author of The Truth About Keeping Secrets'That ending! Pure genius' – Yasmin Rahman, author of All the Things We Never Said'This book was a delight from start to finish. I laughed. I cried. And I very much enjoyed attempting to solve the case with Pip (who I now want to be my best friend). I didn't guess the twist, and I don't think many people will. Holly Jackson has absolutely killed it with her debut!' – Aisha Busby, author of A Pocketful of Stars and contributor to the award-winning A Change is Gonna Come'Prepare to be murdered by this book. Dark, dangerous and intricately plotted my heart literally pounded. I haven't been this addicted to anything since Serial. Holly Jackson is the next big thing, I promise' – Laura Stevens, author of The Exact Opposite of Okay'Twisty and compelling' – Fiona Noble, Bookseller

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Tuesday, the first day of the trial at Aylesbury Crown Court, and Pip had been called as a witness for the prosecution. Dressed in a new suit and a white shirt, trying to stop her hands from fidgeting so the jury wouldn’t see. Sweat prickling down her back. And every second, she’d felt his eyes on her from the defendant’s table, his gaze a physical thing, crawling over her exposed skin. Max Hastings.

The one time she’d glanced at him, she’d seen the smirk behind his eyes that no one else would see. Not behind those fake, clear-lens glasses anyway. How dare he? How dare he stand up there and plead not guilty when they both knew the truth? She had a recording, a phone conversation of Max admitting to drugging and raping Becca Bell. It was all right there. Max had confessed when she threatened to tell everyone his secrets: the hit-and-run and Sal’s alibi. But it hadn’t mattered anyway; the private recording was inadmissible in court. The prosecution had to settle for Pip’s recounting of the conversation instead. Which she’d done, word for word . . . well, apart from the beginning of course, and those same secrets she had to keep to protect Naomi Ward.

‘Yeah it was horrible,’ Pip said, ‘but I should still be there.’ She should; she’d promised to follow this story to all of its ends. But instead, Ravi would be there every day in the public gallery, taking notes for her. Because school wasn’t optional : so said her mum and the new headteacher.

‘Pip, please,’ her mum said in that warning voice. ‘This week is difficult enough as it is. And with the memorial tomorrow too. What a week.’

‘Yep,’ Pip agreed with a sigh.

‘You OK?’ Her mum paused, resting a hand on Pip’s shoulder.

‘Yeah. I’m always OK.’

Her mum didn’t quite believe her, she could tell. But it didn’t matter because a moment later there was a rapping of knuckles against the front door: Ravi’s distinctive pattern. Long-short-long . And Pip’s heart picked up to match it, as it always did.

Jingle plays Pip Hello Pip FitzAmobi here and welcome back to A Good - фото 9

[Jingle plays]
Pip: Hello, Pip Fitz-Amobi here and welcome back to A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder: The Trial of Max Hastings . This is the third update, so if you haven’t yet heard the first two mini-episodes, please go back and listen to those before you return. We are going to cover what happened today, the third day of Max Hastings’ trial, and joining me is Ravi Singh . . .
Ravi: Hello.
Pip: . . . who has been watching the trial unfold from the public gallery. So today started with the testimony from another of the victims, Natalie da Silva. You may well recognize the name; Nat was involved in my investigation into the Andie Bell case. I learned that Andie had bullied Nat at school, and had even sought and distributed indecent images of her on social media. I believed this could be a possible motive and, for a time, I considered Nat a person of interest. I was entirely wrong, of course. Today, Nat appeared in Crown Court to give evidence about how, on 24 February 2012 at a calamity party, she was allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted by Max Hastings, the charges listing one count of sexual assault and one count of assault by penetration. So, Ravi, can you take us through how her testimony went?
Ravi: Yeah. So, the prosecutor asked Nat to establish a timeline of that evening: when she arrived at the party, the last instance she looked at the time before she began to feel incapacitated, what time she woke up in the morning and left the house. Nat said that she only has a few hazy snatches of memory: someone leading her into the back room away from the party and laying her on a sofa, feeling paralyzed, unable to move and someone lying beside her. Other than that, she described herself as being blacked out. And then, when she woke up the next morning, she felt dreadful and dizzy, like it was the worst hangover she’d ever had. Her clothes were in disarray and her underwear had been removed.
Pip: And, to revisit what the prosecution’s expert witness said on Tuesday about the effects of benzodiazepines like Rohypnol, Nat’s testimony is very much in line with what you’d expect. The drug acts like a sedative and can have a depressant effect on the body’s central nervous system, which explains Nat’s feeling of being paralyzed. It feels almost like being separated from your own body, like it just won’t listen to you, your limbs aren’t connected any more.
Ravi: Right, and the prosecutor also made sure the expert witness repeated, several times, that a side effect of Rohypnol was ‘blacking out’, as Nat said, or having anterograde amnesia , which means an inability to create new memories. And I think the prosecutor wants to keep reminding the jury of this point, because it will play a significant part in the testimonies of all the victims; the fact that they don’t remember exactly what happened because the drug impacted their ability to make memories.
Pip: And the prosecutor was keen to repeat that fact regarding Becca Bell. As a reminder, Becca recently changed her plea to guilty, accepting a three-year sentence, despite a defence team who were confident they could get her no jail time due to her being a minor at the time of Andie’s death, and the circumstances surrounding it. So yesterday, Becca gave her evidence by video link from prison, where she will be for the next eighteen months.
Ravi: Exactly. And, like with Becca, today the prosecution was keen to establish that they both only had one or two alcoholic drinks the night of the alleged attacks, which couldn’t possibly account for the level of intoxication. Specifically, Nat said she only drank one 330-millilitre bottle of beer all night. And she stated, explicitly, who gave her that drink on her arrival: Max.
Pip: And how did Max react, while Nat was giving her evidence?
Ravi: From the public gallery, I can only really see him from the side, or the back of his head. But he seems to be acting the same way he has since Tuesday. This sort of calm, very still demeanour, eyes turned to whoever’s in the witness box as though he’s really interested in what they’re saying. He’s still wearing those thick-rimmed glasses, and I’m one hundred per cent certain they aren’t prescription lenses – I mean, my mum’s an optometrist.
Pip: And is his hair still long and sort of unkempt, like it was on Tuesday?
Ravi: Yeah, that seems to be the image he and his lawyer have settled on. Expensive suit, fake glasses. Maybe they think his blonde, messy hair will be disarming to the jury or something.
Pip: Well, it’s worked for certain recent world leaders.
Ravi: The courtroom sketch artist let me take a photo of her sketch today, and said we could post it after the press published it. You can see her impression of Max sitting there while his solicitor, Christopher Epps, cross-examines Nat on the stand.
Pip: Yes, and if you’d like to look at the sketch, you can find it on the appendix materials on the website agoodgirlsguidetomurderpodcast.com . So, let’s talk about the cross-examination.
Ravi: Yes, it was . . . pretty rough. Epps asked a lot of invasive questions. What were you wearing that night? Did you dress promiscuously on purpose? –showing photos of Nat that night from social media. Did you have a crush on your classmate, Max Hastings? How much alcohol would you drink on an average night? He also brought up her past criminal conviction for assault occasioning bodily harm, implying that it made her untrustworthy. It was, essentially, a character assassination. You could see Nat getting upset, but she stayed calm, took a few seconds to breathe and have a sip of water before answering each question. Her voice was shaking, though. It was really hard to watch.
Pip: It makes me so angry that this kind of cross-examination of victims is allowed. It almost shifts the burden of proof on to them, and it isn’t fair.
Ravi: Not fair at all. Epps then grilled her about not going to the police the next day, if she was sure she was assaulted and who the perpetrator was. That if she’d gone within seventy-two hours, a urinalysis could have confirmed whether she even had Rohypnol in her system which, he claimed, was up for debate. Nat could only reply that she hadn’t been sure afterwards, because she had no memory. And then Epps said, ‘If you have no memory, how do you know you didn’t consent to any sexual activity? Or that you even interacted with the defendant that night?’ Nat replied that Max had made a loaded comment to her the following Monday, asking if she’d had a ‘good time’ at the party because he had. Epps never let up. It must have been exhausting for Nat.
Pip: It seems this is his tactic for Max’s defence. To somehow undermine and discredit each of us as witnesses. With me, it was his claim about how convenient it was that I had Max to use as a male patsy, to try make Becca Bell and her alleged manslaughter sympathetic. That it was all part of the ‘aggressive feminist narrative’ I’ve been pushing with my podcast.
Ravi: Yeah, that does seem to be the route Epps is going down.
Pip: I guess that’s the kind of aggressive strategy you get when your lawyer costs three hundred pounds an hour. But money is no issue for the Hastings family, of course.
Ravi: It doesn’t matter whatever strategy he uses; the jury will see the truth.
Two Words spliced growing across the gaps like vines as her eyes unfocused - фото 10

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