In Highway Thirteen, Fiona McFarlane has put together a cleverly conceived collection of connected short stories to build a full 360 degree view of the crimes committed on a highway to the south of Sydney in Australia. Personally, I think this concept works best if you’re going into the collection aware that there’s some kind of connection in each story, no matter how small. Each one is then made relevant by one or more of the later stories.

This collection of loosely connected short stories centres around a serial killer who picked up his victims on a highway before killing and burying them in the Barrow State Forest outside of Sydney. This is clearly based on a notorious real life case in the 1990s and through these stories we’re given a fascinating fictionalised view of the various people who could possibly have been affected by these crimes.

The various different connections come from characters such as: an empath who is obsessed with the case and can feel the victims calling to her; a politician who has the unfortunate luck of sharing the same last name as the killer; a couple who meets a Swiss tourist planning to hitchhike south to her fruit picking job; a wife who suspects her husband isn’t actually working on a gardening job south of Sydney. There are some imaginative ways in which others are tied into this logical jigsaw.

I must admit I was caught a little by surprise with these short stories, unsure what to think by what I thought were sudden endings to each. It was only when I was four or five stories in that it twigged that we were revolving around a common theme and the theme was dark and dangerous.

There are a variety of styles used across these stories, some of them are very effective, others are a little distracting and one, a stream of consciousness ramble without any full-stops, was just plain exhausting. But in each, the game became trying to discern just how each story linked in with the rest - some were obvious, others were more obscure.

This is a conceptually successful adaptation of a true crime story into a series of fictionalised accounts. It provides a personalised glimpse into how those personally involved in these terrible crimes might have reacted and been affected. Fiona McFarlane, through these richly devised short stories has created a thought provoking work.

<i>My thanks to Allen & Unwin via NetGalley for providing me with a digital ARC that allowed me to read, enjoy and review this book.</i>

Highway 13 was amazingly told in short stories, with every story told in a different timeline but connected together by one person woving what happened to others. Loved how fiona wrote this and would recommend it to others.

An excellent collection of short stories all loosely connected about people affected by a serial killer (an Ivan Milan type ). I found it really effective especially the earlier stories, very well written and hard to put down.

A collection brilliantly woven together connected people that have been affected by the serial killer.

One of my favourites from Fiona.

I think this one will be really popular at our store. Fiona McFarlane always does well here, and people will love the way this was written as an ode to true crime, with interwoven stories connecting the people who have been affected by a serial killer. Very thought-provoking on our consumption of true crime media.

I loved The Sun Walks Down, but I think I loved Highway 13 even more. McFarlane does such a brilliant job at exploring quintessential Australian stories and giving light to them through a new perspective. The stories in Highway 13 were poignant, moving, and clever, and as each one unfolded I wondered how the characters would connect back to Biga. I particularly loved the tale of the students on the class trip to Rome. Amazing!