Told across two timelines and tapping into a horrific crime, All the Little Liars is a gripping novel about toxic friendship, the ripple effects of murder, and sisterly love that asks: how much would you sacrifice to belong?
California 2003: Finn “Kat” Jackman is a 10-year-old girl living with her tween sister, father, and beloved housekeeper. When a 13-year-old girl disappears from a party at Turtle Lake, and the word LIAR written in blood is discovered on the trunk of a nearby tree, Kat’s life is turned upside down. What we know: Three teenagers went to the lake that night but only two came back. Later, they confess to murdering their friend. But why? And did they act alone? And what was the involvement of the mysterious and alluring Manson-like figure Ryder Grady? What REALLY happened at Turtle Lake?: You think you know. Think again.
Publisher:
Union Square & Co.
Print pages:
304
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“Heathers meets Charles Manson in this tale of good girls gone bad. I loved it!”
—Ian Rankin, bestselling author of the Inspector Rebus series
“I couldn’t put it down.”
—Shari Lapena, bestselling author of The Stranger in the House
“Fantastically addictive; the absolute definition of bingeable.”
—John Marrs, bestselling author of The One
“A thousand cuts above your average killer thriller.… A hands-down five-star triumph.”
—Janice Hallett, bestselling author of The Appeal
“A jaw-dropping twist.”
—Abigail Dean, bestselling author of Girl A
“Finally, a follow-up to the bestselling Truly, Darkly, Deeply—All the Little Liars by the talented Victoria Selman is a spellbingingly tense outing, in which the circumstances of the murder of a young girl prove to be a multifaceted puzzle.”
—Financial Times
“If you like your psychological thrillers chilling and fast-paced with a true crime–inspired plot, All the Little Liars offers up a cleverly-crafted tale of sisterly love, dysfunctional families and dangerous friendships.… It’s easily one of my favorite thrillers of the year.”
—Culturefly
PRAISE FOR
TRULY, DARKLY, DEEPLY
“Beautifully written and moves at the pace of wildfire. It draws you into the dark world of serial murder without celebrating it. Victoria Selman is an exciting and powerfully fresh voice, and her new thriller is one you won’t put down.”
—Patricia Cornwell
“An absorbing and captivating read, this held me in its thrall from beginning to end. Brilliant!”
—S. J. Watson, bestselling author of Before I Go to Sleep
“Utterly gripping, it’s a breathless thriller.”
—The Sun
“A twisty psychological thriller that goes to the heart of how and who we love. Can’t wait to see what Selman does next.”
—Sarah Pinborough, bestselling author of Behind Her Eyes
“I was hooked from the first page of this impressive thriller, and found it impossible to put down.… Highly recommended.”
—Alex Michaelides, bestselling author of The Silent Patient
“A smart, sophisticated and compelling mystery thriller.… The characters and situations absolutely ring true and she had me all the way.”
—Mark Olshaker, co-author of Mindhunter
“Nail-biting suspense with real humanity and depth.”
—J. P. Delaney, bestselling author of The Girl Before
“The accumulating tension is screwed tight in the ingeniously constructed narrative.”
—Financial Times
It was a case that shocked the nation, rocked our town to its roots. Put it on the map for all the wrong reasons.
As the details emerged, strangers hashed over the particulars waiting in line at supermarkets and Starbucks. Shook their heads at the horror of it all. At the terrible tragedy. On each of their faces, the same expressions of slacked-jawed disbelief. And perhaps a certain ghoulish delight too.
How could such a thing happen? they asked. Here in our neighborhood? A neighborhood like this?
It’s always the quiet ones, they said. Shows you can never really know anybody …
In time, of course, the conversation shifted. Obama was elected president. Michael Jackson suffered a cardiac arrest. The financial markets crashed.
Izzy’s fate became just another true crime curiosity for people to puzzle over. They didn’t forget about her, but they did move on.
It’s different for me. I’m Izzy Jackman’s sister. I don’t get to forget or move on.
Especially given my role in what happened to her. The shameful part I played.
My iPhone rings as I’m rummaging in my handbag for Tylenol. Shoulders hunched against the driving rain. Converse soaked; socks sodden.
The water is cold between my toes. March already but still no sign of spring.
I should have brought an umbrella, should have drunk less last night. Could have at least knocked back a glass of water before I hit the hay. That would have been good, would have made a change.
Story of my life: should’ve, could’ve, would’ve …
When will I learn?
The phone trills again, a nail through my skull.
I thought the point of vodka was it didn’t give you a hangover. Or maybe I’m just getting old. Less tolerant in more ways than one. Knocking on thirty and already ancient.
Maybe if I drank less …
Should. Could. Won’t.
I bypass the pill packet, pull out the phone, check the screen. It’s not often I get calls. Or make them.
Backlit, three words: No Caller ID.
A telemarketer, I expect.
I answer.
“Yes?”
Always braver in my head …
There’s a pause and a click as the line connects. The wail of a police siren in the background, different to the type you get on the limey side of the pond.
My physical response is immediate. A prickle down my spine. Hairs rising on my forearms.
Muscle memory. They say the mind forgets but the body never does.
“Finn?” says the voice on the other end.
Californian. Female. A faint lisp.
“Finn Jackman?”
Finn?
Blood crashes in my ears, the sudden onslaught of waves. My grip tightens around the phone, fingers unconsciously searching for solidity. In my chest cavity, a hollowing.
Finn Jackman …
It’s been twenty years since I’ve heard that name.
Twenty years, I’ve been wearing a mask.
I changed my name after I lost my sister. All anybody saw when they saw me was Izzy Jackman even though she was a good foot taller and we looked absolutely nothing alike.
Izzy with her turned-in knees and knobbly elbows. Wide-set eyes and coltish limbs. Sprawled sideways on a chair, legs flung over the arm. Chewing the tip of a pen or a hangnail. Always chewing something.
Versus me of the stocky legs and dust-covered feet. Scabs from climbing trees. Easily bored and hair invariably awry.
Branded cattle after I lost my sister. A flashing sign above my head.
Going to the grocery store, walking down the street—wherever I went, strangers would gawk. Whisper behind their hands—
“Isn’t that Finn? Izzy Jackman’s sister?”
“God, that family … What must it be like?”
“Only thirteen. Just awful …”
It was three years before Hannah Montana hit the Disney Channel, yet even then most ten-year-olds dreamed of fame. But I wasn’t most girls. Not after Turtle Lake.
After Izzy was taken from us, I craved anonymity. Longed to blend into the background. To become invisible.
Instead, I was an exhibit. Everyone wanted a piece of me. The reporters who’d holler after me as I walked to school, wanting to know how I was doing. How it felt to be related to Izzy.
People I knew, people I’d never met. They all had an opinion, all wanted to be part of the story.
Vultures, my father called them, pushing the slats in the blinds apart with his thumb and forefinger. Tutting as he took in the hounds and their news vans before ducking back into his study. His sanctuary. His escape room.
I longed to escape what had happened. Not that you ever get to escape something like that. Murder is a stone cast into a pond. The ripples fan wide, a disturbance beneath the surface that never goes away.
Carlsbad was haunted. My sister was everywhere I looked and yet nowhere she should have been. Her ghost was down by the lagoon where we clambered on rocks and caught the frog that day. In the potato-chip aisle at Vons, badgering Dita for Fritos back before she started dieting and checking the calorie count on everything. In the yard reading Judy Blume, swaying gently in our old string hammock.
If only I could stop seeing her, stop thinking about her. Remembering was agony. Every cloud carried her face, every crack in the sidewalk brought back her smile. It was as if the whole world were conspiring to remind me what I’d had and what I’d lost.
As if it would never let me alone.
My father was haunted too. He forgot to eat, would go days without sleeping. I’d come down in the morning to find him sitting in yesterday’s clothes, eyes made of marble.
He spoke in monosyllables. Got thinner by the week.
“Goddamn internet,” he’d mutter. “Are they ever going to stop?”
The web had given him a rough ride. People he’d never even met, blaming him for what had happened with Izzy.
They called him a “bad parent,” reckoned if he’d been working fewer hours and paying closer attention, things wouldn’t have wound up the way they had. That she would never have got involved with a man like Ryder Grady. That her friendship with Plum and Lu would never have turned so deadly.
Maybe the naysayers were right.
Maybe I was a bad sister too. There are things I should have done differently as well. Things that might have changed what came to pass.
He was aloof, folks said when my father ignored their questions. Cold, when he kept his eyes directed at the ground.
“I’ve never once seen him cry,” I heard one of our dumbass neighbors tell the mailman.
Mothers at the school gates pondered whether he was “taking anything.” Our pastor suggested he start coming to services. Jesus loves you …
Jesus had a funny way of showing it.
My father was a judge, one of the youngest ever elected to the Californian bench, though he never seemed very young to me with his plodding walk and the way he squinted at the Olive Garden menu when he forgot to bring his reading glasses.
Not that he needed them. He always ordered the same thing.
Let me guess. Parmigiana for you, Judge?
I used to think he was famous. Everyone seemed to know who he was. Used to have a “Hi, Judge” for him when he came into their shops. Asked his opinion on everything from fishing to football, although he was interested in neither (but polite enough not to show it).
Or maybe he was just smart. He needed folks to like him. Needed them to put a cross by his name each time fresh ballot papers came out.
My sister and I didn’t see that side of it. We were just two girls proud of our dad.
“People really look up to him,” Izzy said. “Imagine what that must feel like …”
It all changed after Turtle Lake. The judge found himself judged, which was tough, not least because of how hard he was already judging himself. The town’s criticisms amplifying his own:
How did I miss the signs?
Where did it all go wrong?
How could I have been so blind?
I’ve spent my adult life asking the same questions, reading whatever I could lay my hands on about Turtle Lake.
I must have listened to every podcast, scoured every Reddit thread. Studied all the books and police reports. Even watched that stupid movie that came out on cable a couple of years ago. Inside the Circle, it was called. The shout line: She thought they were her friends …Yet despite all my searching, I still don’t understand how it could have happened. How things could have gone so far.
Gone so wrong.
We left California and moved to London at the end of ’03. Three months after the sentencing, three days after the capture of Saddam Hussein. The dictator’s disheveled hair and scraggy beard were on all the front pages but all anyone in our town was talking about was Izzy.
“Fresh start will be good for us,” my father said, sealing yet another box shut.
BOOKS, he wrote on the side in black marker pen. Added: FINN in brackets.
“Not Finn,” I whined. “You have to call me Kat now.”
As if a new name would change what had happened. As if it would make everything okay.
“What’s that?” he asked in an absent way, breaking off another piece of tape with his teeth.
“My name’s Kat. Not Finn anymore.”
How many times had I told him?
“Sorry, yes,” he mumbled. “Takes a bit of getting used to …”
The idea of moving took some getting used to as well.
The house was filled with cardboard boxes. Rooms stripped bare, back to their bones. A carcass when the birds have done picking at it.
I was on the couch, sorting the contents of a drawer. The couch that had been in our living room my whole life. There was now a photo of it on eBay: L-shaped sectional, 100% brown leather …
“Are you ready for me to do that one up?” my father asked, coming over to inspect how far I’d got. (Not very far.)
He pulled out a pink shell, grains of sand embedded in the whorls. Let out an exasperated sigh.
“I’m tired of saying the same thing, Finn. You need to be selective. We can’t take every little doodad.”
“Kat, not Finn!”
I snatched the shell back, traced my finger along the spiral lines.
“It’s special.”
“So is everything, apparently. Put it in the chuck pile, please.”
I don’t know why I didn’t tell him I’d found the shell at South Beach with my mother. He might have let me keep it if I had.
She had died six years earlier. June 1997, a few short months after our housekeeper, Dita, moved in with us. A collision coming home from the supermarket. On the passenger seat beside her, a cooler bag containing the rum raisin Häagen-Dazs I’d nagged her to get because we were all out and it was my favorite. The reason she’d gone out that day. The reason she hadn’t made it home.
“You can’t think like that, chick,” Dita told me. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Whose fault was it, then?”
She kissed the top of my head, said God must have needed another angel in heaven.
“He only chooses the best people.”
I was mad at God for a long time. Why couldn’t he have picked someone else’s mom?
I liked to hold the things that reminded me of her. A penny she’d given to me for luck. The perfectly round pebble we’d discovered together on a walk up in the hills. The pink shell my father was now demanding I leave behind.
He could demand all he liked …
I told him I was going to the bathroom and snuck into Dita’s room, planning to secrete the shell in one of her boxes. No way my father would go through our housekeeper’s things.
“Place would fall apart without Dita,” he used to say.
The year my mother died, my father was elected to the Superior Court bench. I’m not sure which of the two events was the real reason he started working longer hours. Shutting himself in his study more. Telling us silence was golden and he wasn’t to be disturbed.
Dita was the boss, he said.
“Make sure you do what she tells you.”
“You pay her. Doesn’t that make you the boss?”
He said that was a terrible way to talk about a person who loved me like her own. It occurred to me that he hadn’t answered my question, and also that it was probably wise not to say so. My father liked to encourage what he called “independent thinking,” but he also didn’t like back talk.
A tricky tightrope.
Plus, it was true. Dita did love Izzy and me. And we loved her right back. Even when she was lecturing us about our attitudes and the state of our hair or fingernails.
You trying to start a garden under those? Go clean them before you get worms …
I opened the door to her room now, a room that always smelled of cinnamon and vanilla. The smell of baking and of her.
It took me a beat to realize what was wrong.
We were moving to England in two days and yet there wasn’t a single box or suitcase in sight. Her hairbrushes and pots of face cream were still laid out on top of her dresser. The closet still full of her clothes. Her cardigans and smocks and the polka-dot two-piece she kept special for church. A size fourteen and too tight on her.
Dita’s clothes were always big and always tight.
On the shelves, the collection of porcelain kittens that had belonged to her mother, whom she’d stayed in Green River to nurse before moving in with us, because “Family’s all you got. You do everything you can to take care of them, chick.”
On the nightstand, one of her Barbara Cartland paperbacks with two people in Victorian costume kissing on the jacket. A box of Kleenex. A half-empty box of See’s Candies. (I checked, helped myself to a Scotchmallow.)
I looked around, chewing. Understanding slowly seeping in.
“Dita!” I yelled. “Dita!”
She came hurrying into the room, wiping floury hands on her apron. Put one of them to my forehead.
“What’s wrong? Are you feeling okay?”
I pushed her off, made a sweeping gesture with my arm.
“All your stuff … none of it’s packed.”
She exhaled, rubbed her lips together. Then in a soft voice—
“I’m not coming with you, chick.”
I examined her face, searching for the joke. But her expression was serious.
“What are you talking about?”
Dita had practically raised me after my mother passed. It was Dita who tucked me in at night and got me up for school in the morning. Dita who knew without me needing to say a word if something was wrong. Who always knew what to say to make it better.
Of course, she was coming. We couldn’t move without her!
I love you girls to heaven and back, she’d tell Izzy and me.
I was three and a half when she arrived on our doorstep with her big carpetbag and Mary Poppins umbrella. It was the year Madeline Albright became the first female secretary of state and the Lion King debuted on Broadway. An omen in that, my father would joke once we’d got to know her better. Nothing Miss Dita wouldn’t do for her cubs!
My mother introduced us carefully, explained this was our new housekeeper and she was coming to live with us. To help look after us and take care of the place.
“Can you say ‘hello’ nicely, Finn?”
I stuck out my lip, told her, “I wouldn’t say it meanly.”
Dita laughed a booming laugh that matched her big bouncy curls. A laugh from the belly with her head tipped back and all her teeth on display. I’d never seen such white teeth. Asked, “Are you a dentist?”
She crouched down so we were level, took my hands in hers. Swung my arms open and closed.
“Afraid I like cookies too much to be a dentist,” she said, chuckling, and straight away I knew we’d be friends.
I loved her immediately. Loved her scent of snickerdoodles, which it turned out she was rather good at making—though peach cobbler was her real speciality.
“How old are you?” I asked.
She winked, tapped the side of her nose.
“Old enough not to share.”
I never did find out her age, though she wasn’t exactly what she’d have called a “spring lamb.” Mrs. Malaprop, my father nicknamed her. For a long time, I thought that was her actual last name.
The idea she wasn’t coming with us to London was ridiculous. I must have misunderstood.
“You mean you’re getting a different flight?”
Maybe she was staying back to close up the house? To tidy away the last bits? If so, perhaps she could help me out with that shell …
She shook her head.
“No, honey. I’m not taking a different flight.”
“Then what? I don’t get it.”
She breathed in deep, said my father would explain.
“But—”
“Talk to Daddy, chick …”
“Fine, I will,” I replied as if it were a threat.
I marched into the living room where my father was closing up another box.
“Dita says she’s not coming to London. You need to tell her she is.”
He set down the tape, squeezed his temples.
I took in the set of his shoulders, the downturn at the corners of his mouth.
“Daddy?” I said, stomach tightening. Then, in a quieter tone—“What’s going on?”
“I can’t get her a visa,” he said.
“What are you talking about? You got them for us.”
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