Highway Thirteen by Fiona McFarlane

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on August 13, 2024

The stories in Highway Thirteen are linked by Paul Biga, a (fictional) serial killer who abducted and kidnapped a dozen girls he found walking on an Australian highway between 1990 and 1997. The stories take place at different times over the last fifty years, apart from one set in 1950 and another in 2028. Taken together, they examine the impact that a single criminal had on multiple lives across time and continents.

I was impressed by nine of the twelve stories, a higher average than is typical for a short story collection. A couple of stories are about secret thoughts. In “Tourists,” a walk in a forest where a serial killer buried his victims might spark an office romance — or a rejection. During the walk, the woman senses evil, while the man envisions himself killing his walking companion.

Also based on hidden thoughts, “Hunter on the Highway” (my favorite story in the book) takes place after a female hitchhiker is attacked. The victim’s description of her attacker matches May’s boyfriend. He’s an uncomplicated, likable bar band musician but does she really know him? Will she talk herself into believing that he’s a killer and calling a hotline to report her suspicion? The story has something important to say about how media hype associated with crime pollutes the heads of people who begin to see criminals everywhere.

“Demolition” builds on familiar news interviews of neighbors who say that the serial killer next door kept to himself and was “just a little off.” Paul Biga lived across the street from Eva. When he was a child, he helped her with gardening. As a retired teacher who taught Biga, she knows that all adolescents are strange and bewildered. Paul did not seem unusually strange, although she didn’t tell the journalist who interviewed her (for the second time, on the occasion of Biga’s home’s demolition) about the disturbing letter he wrote her.

A couple of other stories are also based on memories. The Englishman in “Abroad” attempts to cope with Halloween in America, a celebration of the supernatural that forces him to acknowledge memories of his sister’s unexplained disappearance in Australia when he was a child and how it changed his father’s life. In “Hostess,” a retired flight attendant reflects with melancholy upon the time he shared a home, and sometimes a bed, with another retired flight attendant and her faithful dog. The connection to Biga comes from the female flight attendant’s attempt to persuade her sister to end her engagement to an older man who (in the flight attendant’s opinion) is creepy.

“Fat Suit” is about an Australian actor whose Hollywood marriage is breaking up just as he begins filming a movie in which he plays the famous serial killer (he got fat after years in jail). The story illustrates how one thought sparks another as the actor contemplates his father’s death, his failed marriage, his relationship with his stepchildren, and whales.

While a majority of the stories are serious, some are infused with dark humor. The narrator of “Hostel” tells the story of Mandy and Roy, who like to tell the story of the Swiss backpacker they found weeping outside a hostel — a girl who later was murdered. The narrator imagines herself in the Swiss girl’s position as she entertains fantasies about Roy. “Hostel” uses humor to capture the truth of its characters: “It’s not that Mandy was vain; she just liked to be good at everything she did. So she liked to be good at having a body.”

Fiona McFarlane’s humor is fully displayed in “Democracy Sausage.” A political candidate named Biga isn’t sure whether he is related to the infamous serial killer, but he questions whether voters will disassociate him from his “blackened” name. While Biga is hosting a backyard barbeque, a dog “came springing out from the underbrush of a local riverside path with, between his teeth, a large rubber dildo, the colour of fair flesh but streaked with silty mud, resembling nothing so much as a poorly barbequed sausage.”

Set in 2028, “Podcast” is written in the form of a transcript of a very funny true crime podcast. A recently discovered body that might be linked to Biga (now eight years dead) is the podcast’s subject, although the discussion is quickly diverted to a gossipy account of a podcaster’s gay marriage (his husband doesn’t understand the true crime obsession) and speculation about life in Australia, a country the podcasters have never visited. The podcast tangentially addresses the concept of murder as entertainment, which is an apt description of true crime books, movies, TV shows, and podcasts.

The way in which McFarlane links such diverse stories is dazzling. Biga is in the background of each story, sometimes so tangentially that it takes a bit of effort to understand how he relates to the story’s characters, yet the stories shy away from the gruesome details of murder. They touch instead on the lives of people who feel the impact of Biga’s crimes, sometimes without even knowing that a crime occurred. Many of the individual stories are memorable. Collectively, they gain additional power. Highway Thirteen might be a good choice for a crime fiction book club in search of an offbeat offering that moves beyond the genre's cliches.

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