My Last Confession by Helen Fitzgerald

Val Penny ♦ August 12, 2013 ♦ 1 Comment

Helen Fitzgerald was born in 1966 in Melbourne, Australia.  FitzGerald was the twelfth of thirteen children and is now is a novelist and screenwriter.   She was brought up in the country town of Kilmore in Victoria but moved to the UK in 1991.   She started writing while working as a criminal justice social worker and she latterly worked with serious sex offenders in the notorious Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow, Scotland.  She now lives in Glasgow with her husband and two children.

“My Last Confession“, is the third novel by Fitzgerald but it was the first of her books I had read.   I think I picked it up from the library by accident!  Apparently the main characters, Krissie and Chas, are from her first novel, “Dead Lovely” but this book can be read as a stand alone very acceptably, should you want to read it at all!  It is not for the mushy amongst us, it has to be said.

I am not Roman Catholic, however, I understand that traditionally trained Roman Catholics will recognise the allusion in the title to the sacrament of Penance (“It has been thus and so many weeks since my last confession”).   Here it turns out the “penitent” is actually a serial killer who includes a request for albolution for a murder he is planning to commit.

The plot has a great pace but I really disliked all the characters and did not care what happened to any of them, except for the little boy.  I thought he would have been better off with his grandparents!   Fitzgerald uses language and scene settings that are not ‘chick-lit’ by any stretch of the imagination.  I found this a rather shallow piece and would not recommend it.  However, at 270 pages it does have the one merit of being relatively short!