Writing about her own experiences working with survivors of domestic abuse, Jessica Moor’s debut novel centres around a murder investigation at a women’s refuge. Through many twists and turns, Keeper reveals how abuse can take from women in more ways than one, and, as such, will leave you reeling long after you close the book. 

The novel unfolds using a plurality of different voices and transports readers through different time periods with flashbacks and memories. Much like the recollection of the past itself, reading this novel is disorientating in the best way. The novel takes its time in telling the truth and, playfully, only reveals what it wants you to see little by little. 

This give-and-take approach from Moor keeps readers on tenterhooks throughout, scared of reading too fast for fear of missing out on an important detail. As such, you can’t help but get intimate with this book, letting it affect you as you are pulled closer and closer to the investigation.

Giving a platform to the often unheard voices of female domestic abuse survivors, Moor follows the individual narratives of an array of different women living together at the refuge. What binds them? Their collective suffering at the hands of  violent men.

Moor’s telling of Katie Straw’s story poignantly touches on emotional abuse and psychological manipulation —  issues only recently recognised by law but eerily familiar to the collective consciousness of women in fiction. Moor’s novel has been connected in its roots by The Guardian to everything from the 1938 play Gas Light to Louise Doughty’s recent novel Platform Seven. Although innovative in its approach, Moor’s novel cannot help but be connected to the wider discourse of female suffering, and plays an important role in shedding light on this topic.

This novel is so much more than just a mystery book. Yes, it’s a thrilling crime novel for readers to chip away at, but it’s also a chilling peek behind the curtain of the justice system. It gives insight into legislative systems and processes — cogs that turn in the police force — and how these processes can not only go wrong, but can sometimes be the wrong.

Through her portrayal of the older, male police officer, D.C Whitworth, Moor does a saddeningly good job of painting the picture of indifference towards the sufferings of women. While, taken at surface value, Whitworth is out of touch and nearing retirement, on a greater level, he embodies (and, at times, perpetuates) the wider reluctance to believe women who come forward about domestic violence in the world in which Katie Straw lives.

All in all, Keeper is a carefully-plotted novel that, despite its twists, turns, and moments of darkness, is sure to bring everything to light in a blindingly stark ending.