Publisher – Tor.com

Published – Out Now

Price – BOTH - £2.08 Kindle £7.99 paperback

The rule is simple: don’t bleed.

For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she’s been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction.

Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she’ll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?

A short review on two novellas (one of which I had not realised I’d previously reviewed) and so there will be spoilers when I get to book two!!

I think one of my worst nightmares was being chased by someone I knew wanted to kill me. No one likes to be chased and knowing you could die is the icing on the terrible cake. In Tade Thompson’s excellent The Murders of Molly Southbourne we go into a living nightmare where we find the killer and the victim appear to be the same person.

Molly Southbourne has always known someone is trying to kill her. But that appears to be herself. Whenever Molly cuts or bleeds the blood will create a clone and then they launch themselves at Molly. It’s a simple but genius device that plunges this novella into firm horror territory and what makes it work is how we see since Molly was a young child this ability/curse has slowly destroyed her life and all her relationships. It’s a remorseless chilling nightmare of a story and we get sight of shadowy agencies and family secrets that may explain how things came about but this doesn’t make it any easier for Molly. In particular if a single drop of spilt blood creates a clone just imagine how many scenarios that creates through a lifetime.

How this story works is we are told in Molly’s voice and importantly we see the toll on this young woman’s mindset. This is the constant drip, drip and drip of pain and loss. The story goes to the darkest of places and watching Molly become a skilled fighter, closed off from the world and constantly looking over shoulder we start to understand where she has ended up and why she is now telling her story. It leaves on a unexpected cliff-hanger….

Ok if you don’t want to be spoiled look away NOW …

Who was Molly Southbourne? What did she leave behind?

A burnt-out basement. A name stained in blood. Bodies that remember murder, one of them left alive. A set of rules that no longer apply.

Molly Southbourne is alive. If she wants to survive, she'll need to run, hide, and be ready to fight. There are people who remember her, who know what she is and what she's done. Some want her alive, some want her dead, and all hold a piece to the puzzles in her head. Can Molly escape them, or will she confront the bloody history that made her?

So Murders ends with the suicide of Molly and yet she ensured one of her clones survived and got all the details of her life. Now this new Molly has to decide what she does next with her life. If the first story is a tense horror story where the victim is endlessly chased in this story Thompson avoids repetition of approach in this case we move much more into the realm of a conspiracy thriller and pleasingly gives a great story but in a very different way.

Survival works here by expanding the world of Molly that was initially glimpsed in the first story and makes use of its 1980s settings to move into Cold War territory of secret ops teams, dangerous experiments, and spies on all sides. This mystery replaces the tale of Molly’s ability, and more is about how has this all happened and who else knows about it. More than one clone may be evidenced and perhaps a bigger game is in progress. These are hinted at but fully resolved as to who is fighting whom.

What we do get are some high-octane fight scenes where we feel every shot, blow and punch and most impressively a look at how this Moll’s mindset is. If in the first book Molly was just a walking damaged survivor now its about her processing the PTSD and we see her both lose control and seek release where she finds it. Can Molly stabilise or is she far too gone?

Again, this tale is rounded up neatly and surprisingly, but we are also seeing the direction for a final confrontation and hopefully we will see that later this year. Its another skilled and polished tale by one of our best authors in the genre.