Set in Yorkshire in 1979 shortly after the election of Margaret Thatcher, Jennie Godfrey’s novel revolves around a working-class family living in the shadow of a new Conservative government and the Yorkshire Ripper murders. The novel opens with 12-year-old Miv quietly fretting about the stories in the papers of young women being killed and her aunt’s suggestion that life would be better if they moved down south. Appalled at the prospect of leaving her home, Miv hatches a plan. She and her best friend, Sharon, will do what the police have so far failed to do: they will catch the Yorkshire Ripper.
The List of Suspicious Things – the title comes from Miv’s list of the suspicious goings-on in her community – comes with a keen sense of time and place. Miv’s is a world of jam roly-poly, shag pile carpets, The Wombles, children playing outside until dark and husbands and fathers spending their evenings in the pub. It’s also a time when games of “It” at school are replaced by “Ripper chase”, and women avoid going out alone for fear of being the killer’s next victim.
