Fitcher’s Bird by A.G. Slatter

Book Review

Elloise

Chloe does not like the dark, so it is definitely time to leave the school library behind and head home. From the gates she can see her cottage and the lights that will welcome her home. Tonight there is a bunch of flowers awaiting her on the doorstep… another one, but they may not turn out to be the hopelessly romantic gesture she has imagined. When Chloe awakens, it is to unusual darkness, and so she knows something is wrong.

Where Chloe uses light as her coping mechanism, Zoe always turned to drink, drugs, and whatever and whoever she could get her hands on. Of the three sisters, it is the youngest, Chloe, who keeps in contact with the other two. Dido and Zoe have no more time for one another. Not since eldest sister, Dido’s, last and final attempts to get Zoe into rehab and clean. Dido gave up, but Chloe grasps at the threads of relationships and always sends a birthday card. And it is Zoe’s birthday. So what will one drink hurt now, after all? She is clean, controlled, and there is a handsome stranger with eyes only for her.

Dr. Dido Forrester is at a conference and indulging in a little extra-curricular entertainment on the side. That is why she is stopping in a different hotel, after all, away from the prying eyes of her colleagues and her peers. But a phone call from a detective puts an end to all her fun. Her youngest sister has not reported to work in two days, and the school has reported her missing. And Zoe is not answering the phone, as usual. Dido has no choice but to make the long drive home to meet the detective and find out what has happened.

Fitcher’s Bird, if readers are not already aware, is a cautionary Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale centred around the abduction of sisters, the promise of romance, and how curiosity leads to little good. In the story, evil is only overcome by clever-thinking, and in this horror novella, that is the only thing that may help Dido to uncover the truth.

Slatter uses the fairy tale to frame the story and re-writes the evil sorcerer as a serial killer. The reader will slowly learn the secrets of the sisters’ pasts, the loss of their parents, their experiences in foster care, and the actions that lead them to present events.

This is a read-in-one-sitting kind of novella, the story unfolding to reveal poignant truths, and there are touches of gothic romanticism and horror woven throughout. Dido’s no-nonsense attitude and her absolute confident air of superiority should be a barrier to liking her, but somehow the reader finds themselves rooting for her as she wades through clichés and frustrations to find out just who has taken her sister and why.