YOU GIRLS PLAY NICE by KD Aldyn (Poisoned Pen Press 2026) is a darkly unhinged murder mystery and psychological thriller where almost everyone is a suspect, everyone has a motive and yet the police can’t seem to pin the crime on anybody.
Set in contemporary Melbourne five years after the brutal torture and murder of Helen Wyatt, her four friends meet up – as they do every year – to toast her birthday and reminisce. Busy and happily married mother of two Jackie, upcoming actress Rebel, florist Sue and hippie flower child Willow counted Helen as one of their tribe. The only thing more shocking than her death was the result of the subsequent court case – accused man Damien Gatner, demonstrably guilty after all the evidence, is cleared of all charges and set free. He disappears overseas and in the years since, the four remaining friends have mourned, fretted and grieved not only the loss of their friend but the apparent absence of justice in the courtroom that day.
So they decide to play a hypothetical game. If (an imaginary IF, of course) you were going to kill Damien Gatner, torture him and kill him and make him pay for what they know he did to Helen, how would you do it? One by one, over four weeks, the friends construct a macabre but silly game, presenting their personal choice favourite scenario for humiliating and hurting the man who they are certain took their friend’s life. Done in the privacy of Sue’s home, the women let loose, each creating a more grisly and complicated crime than the one before. It is a kind of catharsis, they tell themselves; a way to mitigate their grief and guilt and loss.
But the unthinkable happens. A murder of a man occurs in their city, the details closely resembling one of the scenarios posited by one of the friends. And then another. And another. Suspicion falls onto the four friends after evidence is left (or planted?) at one of the crime scenes that implicates them.
Someone has discovered their secrets and the race is on to find out who is behind these new murders. The police are highly invested in finding what they suspect might be a serial killer, and the four women are intent on finding out exactly who might be framing them or attempting to frighten them off from the truth.
As the novel progresses, it is revealed that each of the four women have secrets of their own, some going back decades. There are hidden pairings between the four. Gradually the reader discovers facts about their histories that present the awful possibility that perhaps one (or more) of the women may actually have something to do with the murders.
The only person who knows everything is Helen. The keeper of everyone’s secrets. She is years dead, but in an unusual structural twist, has a voice in the story. She is aware, in some fashion, of what is happening, and remembers slowly what was done to her and by whom. But of course she can’t communicate this to her friends, much as she wants to do so – to comfort them or restrain them or warn them. She remains (knowingly) omnipotent but (practically) powerless.
KD Aldyn follows up her debut psychological thriller, the visceral SISTER BUTCHER SISTER with another tale of women capable of revenge, evil, hate and suspicion as well as empathy, compassion, love and friendship. The central question of the story is who is telling the truth? The complete truth? Who is keeping secrets? Who are the women up against and is the truth larger than they could ever imagine? And who will find the killer or killers first, the police? Or one of the four friends?
YOU GIRLS PLAY NICE is deliciously dark, tantalisingly terrifying, gripping, visceral, grisly and page-turning. It is about ordinary women doing extraordinary things for those they love. People with banal lives who hold terrible secrets and who play the long game of revenge. Childhood trauma, vicious killings, horrendous characters and a plot that will keep you guessing until the final pages: no-one is safe from suspicion, and nobody is really innocent.
Most crime books are about men killing women but Aldyn turns this on its head in both her books, with her female protagonists proving just as capable – if not even more proficient – at imagining and enacting violence that will make your skin crawl, your toes curl and your nightmares heightened.