Is the truth sometimes best left buried?
A crime masterpiece by bestselling author J. P. Pomare
The violent slaughter of the wealthy Primrose family while they slept shocked the nation of New Zealand and scarred the small idyllic rural town of Cambridge forever.
All of the evidence pointed to their young live-in chef, Bill Ruatara, who was swiftly charged with murder and brought to justice. The brutal crime is now infamous, and Bill a figure of contempt who deserves to rot in jail for life.
Seventeen years later, prison psychologist TK Phillips is fighting for an appeal. He is convinced Bill did not receive a fair trial. When celebrity true-crime podcaster Sloane Abbott takes a sudden interest, it's not long before she uncovers new evidence that could set fire to the prosecution's case.
As TK and Sloane dig deeper into the past, they become tangled in a complex web of danger and deceit. With Bill's innocence far from assured and their own lives at stake, will they risk everything to unearth the truth, or leave it buried for good?
17 Years Later, J.P. Pomare
J.P. Pomare is one of those authors that always, always delivers a slightly different bent on the question "What on Earth is Happening Here?". From the confusion in the reader and character's minds in CALL ME EVIE, to the preconception twisting that's going on in THE WRONG WOMAN and the masterclass in misdirection that was HOME BEFORE NIGHT he's now added the combination of hindsight, expertise and podcasting and reworded the question slightly to "What on Earth Happened Then?" in 17 YEARS LATER.
The story is, on the face of it, a pretty straightforward one. The violent slaughter of a wealthy family when they slept, lead to the identification and lazy investigation of young live-in chef, Bill Ruatara, who was swiftly charged, and then convicted of murder. 17 years later, TK Phillips, a prison psychologist has now thrown a lot of his own life under a bus trying to get an appeal underway, before he walked away from Bill and his case. Then celebrity true-crime podcaster Sloane Abbott is guilted into taking an interest in a "non-white" crime, dragging TK with her, leading to the rapid, almost too easy discovery of new evidence and a potential legal binfire.
Which needless to say leads to more digging, and some extremely unhappy onlookers, with the threat to both Philips and Abbott starting to become very immediate, and an intricate web of small town connections that looks like it might be hard to break open.
Told in varying timelines and viewpoints, 17 YEARS LATER allows Bill Ruatara to have a voice in his own case - something that seemed to have been mostly ignored in the investigation. His viewpoint, and timeline, is all about the events that led up to the murder of the wealthy, English family, which gives the author a chance to reveal a lot about their background, and some dodgy dealings that have gone on before the family arrived in New Zealand. It also provides an insight into the life of a young man, a would be chef, from a poor background who tried to find a way to do the right thing by the girl he loved and ended up in more trouble than you'd think would be possible. The current day investigation takes you more inside the head and eyes of podcaster Abbott in some ways, as she actively pursues leads and tries to understand the time and the place that the murders happened in. Phillips provides historical context in that he's been on Ruatara's side for many years, as well as a conduit between Sloane and the man in prison, as well as expertise on human behaviours. And motivations.
There's a lot under the surface of this small town that doesn't like being stirred up by Abbott and Phillips, anymore than it liked what happened all those years ago. Rapidly paced, there's nothing transparent or easy about what could be seen as a pretty straightforward botched investigation, as more and more "what the" moments are revealed along the way. Racial and class bias, flaws, laziness, blindspots, and just plain old screwups are all explored, as are the ethics and motivations of true crime podcasters. Because it's a Pomare novel, at the end of it all, nothing is left behind in the dark.