lip lit: cry blue murder

I think it’s fair to say ‘thank God Facebook wasn’t around when I was in high school’ is a popular statement among 20-something year olds. Sure, we had MSN and MySpace, but we were spared Facebook’s procrastination-friendly bevy of games, fan pages, chats and snooping opportunities.

We were also spared some of the more latent risks associated with social media and adolescence.  Namely, how easy it is for anyone with a computer to create a realistic looking profile, befriend you with the click of a button, earn your trust and gain countless personal details about your life. As a teenager, I would have been susceptible to that; too concerned about upping my friends count to consider who was adding me, and why. Even those of us with the maturity to discern online risks envy friends’ holiday snaps, exclamation mark happy personal announcements and social updates without considering how abridged these versions of each other are.

YA thriller Cry Blue Murder explores our relationship with Facebook, and the internet in general, within the context of a murder mystery. A serial killer known as the “Cocoon Killer” is kidnapping teenage girls from some of Melbourne’s most elite private schools, poisoning them and then dumping their naked bodies in handwoven blankets made out of human hair. When Celia and Alice meet on a Facebook memorial page for the killer’s latest victim, Hallie Knight, they trade email addresses, developing a friendship based on their mutual fascination for the crime. However, as the police investigation continues, clues begin to emerge, and it becomes clear that real danger has been creeping up on these girls for some time.

We’ve all seen these tribute pages, dominated by strangers’ well-meaning wall posts. Kim Kane and Marion Roberts open the novel with these comments, quickly establishing the hyperreality that is Facebook. While it has the ability to intimately connect us to the victims of horrific crimes, even allowing us to express our sorrow and grief directly to their loved ones, it also disconnects us from the reality of the experience because we are expressing said feelings behind the safety of a computer screen.

Kane and Roberts go on to explore the notion of friendship through this barrier; the ability to be completely open, to share your deepest insecurities and honest opinions without looking the other person in the eye, and the dangers associated with such freedom. Specifically, an inability to distinguish truth from fiction. Though the scenario depicted seemed unrealistically elaborate to me at first, I realised I was being naive about how common these crimes are, and the lengths individuals will go to snare their vulnerable victims. The authors were inspired by real-life cases involving social media, which have a disturbing prevalence among teenagers.

The style of the novel lulls the reader into a false sense of security. The girls’ innocent emails are interspersed with seemingly unrelated newspaper articles, coroner’s reports and interrogation transcripts about the case. There is something compelling about uncovering a mystery in this format, because it places you in the position of a police detective thumbing through clues. As Kim Kane puts it, ‘The documents that comprise the analysis and reporting of crimes really do unravel like a narrative.’ The authors even wrote the novel via email, adding a layer of realism to the characters’ interactions.

The twist is easy to guess early on, but it’s the inevitability of watching the tragedy unfold, and a need to reach the reveal and confirm your suspicions, that keeps you turning the page. Readers may be disappointed by the abruptness of the ending, but I can’t help thinking this was the point. In reality, Facebook crimes sneak up on their victims, and those left behind are rarely satisfied by closure.

Cry Blue Murder is published by University of Queensland Press.