Cover

Praise for C J Skuse

‘Brilliantly-written characters, original and engaging. It’s so good!’

BA Paris

‘This darkly comic novel… has the potential to become a cult classic’

Daily Mail

‘This isn’t a book for the squeamish or the faint-hearted … think Bridget Jones meets American Psycho’

RED

‘Filthy and funny… a compulsive read’

Sunday Times

‘You MUST read this book especially if you like your (anti) heroes dirty-mouthed, deadly dark, dark dark. I adored it’

Fiona Cummins

‘This anti-hero is psychotic without doubt… incredibly funny’

SHOTS

‘Makes Hannibal Lecter look like Mary Poppins… this is going to give me a serious book hangover’

John Marrs

‘If you like your thrillers darkly comic and outrageous this ticks all the boxes’

Sun

‘SO dark, SO laugh-out-loud funny, the world through Rhiannon’s eyes is perfectly, acutely observed. Brilliant!’

SJI Holliday

About the Author

C J SKUSE was born in 1980 in Weston-super-Mare. She has two First Class degrees in Creative Writing and Writing for Young People, and aside from being a novelist works as a Senior Lecturer at Bath Spa University.

Booklist

Also by C J Skuse:

The Alibi Girl

Sweetpea Series:

Sweetpea

In Bloom

For Young Adults:

Pretty Bad Things

Rockoholic

Dead Romantic

Monster

The Deviants

Note to Readers

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

• Change of font size and line height
• Change of background and font colours
• Change of font
• Change justification
• Text to speech
• Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008312589

Dedication

For Alex, Josie and Joshua

Epigraph

How can I be substantial without casting a shadow? I must have a dark side too if I am to be whole.

CARL GUSTAV JUNG, FOUNDER OF ANALYTICAL PSYCHIATRY

Wednesday, 22 January 2020 – Barnes & Noble, Fifth Avenue, New York City

1. Space invaders – arm overspill, leg overstep, sole of shoe overhang
2. Woman on her phone coming out of Sephora who barged into me and told me to apologise. Have wheelchair, must have attitude it seems
3. Cab drivers who stink of beefy crotch sweat
4. That jowly cuck news guy Guy Majors
5. Grandpa Joe – you lazy, lazy bastard

You can smell Bryan coming. He’s the store manager. He bounds onto the makeshift stage with all the elegance of a dying rhino – grey trousers at half-mast, stain on hurriedly bought tie, pustules along his chin, greasy hair scraped into an elastic band by fingernails caked up with newsprint and old cum.

We’re on the mezzanine. Twenty lines of chairs in the endless Biographies section. It’s standing room only. I’m at the back, facing the aisle between a woman with a bulky handbag and a MAGA-capped Hulk Hogan lookalike with more earrings than actual ear. At the front, behind two vacant stools and mic stands, is a huge poster of the book cover with my face on:

THE SWEETPEA KILLER:

The True Confessions of Rhiannon Lewis