Toto Among the Murderers

by Sally J. Morgan

It is 1973 and Jude - known to her friends as Toto - has just graduated from art school and moves into a house in a run-down part of Leeds. Jude is a chaotic wild child who flirts with the wrong kind of people, drinks too much and gets stoned too often. Never happy to stay in one place for very long, her restlessness takes her on hitchhiking jaunts up and down the country. Her best friend, Nel, is the only steady influence Jude has but Nel's life isn't as perfect as it seems.

Reports of attacks on women punctuate the news and Jude takes off again, suffocated by an affair she has been having with a married woman. But what she doesn't realise is that the violence is moving ever closer to home: there is Janice across the road who lives in fear of being beaten up again by her pimp and Nel, whose perfect life is coming undone at her boyfriend's hands. At the same time infamous murderers, Fred and Rosemary West, are stalking the country, on the lookout for girls like Jude.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, LGBT, Thriller, Historical, Book Club, Queer

352 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 5, 2020

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel won the 2022 Portico Prize, one of the prizes I do take note of. It is biennial and open to books that evoke the spirit of the North of England. This one is set in Leeds and Sheffield in around 1973. Morgan takes a very small incident in her own life when she was living in the area. She relates that she was hitchhiking and was offered a lift by (she later discovered) the serial killers Fred and Rose West. This turns into a very small incident in the book. The main protagonist of the book is Jude Totton (the Toto of the title) who is an Art student who has just graduated from Sheffield University. She moves with two friends and fellow art students (Jo and Nel) to Chapeltown in Leeds. There is a focus on the dangers of violence towards women by men. It was the time when the Wests were operating and there were regular reports of young women disappearing or being violently murdered. The Yorkshire Ripper was just starting. Hitchhiking was also common and Toto regularly hitchhikes in the novel: as she says:

“the edge between life and death glitters”

Morgan captures the area well and as I remember it from slightly later in the 1970s. Take this description of a pub:

“a poky collection of fusty rooms, full of art students, anarchists, Irish republicans, homosexuals and prostitutes”

I remember a couple of pubs exactly like that, sometimes with the occasional undercover policeman sticking out like a sore thumb. There are also descriptions of an anarchist alternative school. (I remember escaping from the furore over Charles and Diana’s wedding by going to an anarchist picnic in a Sheffield park just a few years later). Morgan describes areas that were often dangerous and violent, but there were also groups of students, graduates, vegetarian cafes, left wing bookshops, aging hippies (those who hadn’t sold out) and a fair amount of weed. I remember all this well.
This is a well told story, a little earnest at times, but Toto is a strong character and likeable. There is a queer love story at the centre of it as well as a few dysfunctional relationships as well (mainly, but not entirely with men). The sense of male violence is ever present:

“The world runs on the random acts of cruel men”

And Toto is well aware of the dangers of hitchhiking:

“My preferred game is much more dangerous. It’s played with men in small cars who hide girls under leaves on the top of moors and deep in the woods.”

The characters are in that phase between the freedom of youth and the responsibilities of adulthood. Friendship is an enduring theme as Morgan herself indicates:

“I wanted to show friendship across a whole range of possibilities, across class and gender – non-sexual friendship between men and women, the camaraderie of people in the same stage of life, etc., and all the ways friendship can support you through the most testing parts of your life.
The intense friendship between women isn’t as well covered in literature as its male counterpart is, we saw it on screen in Thelma & Louise and in Greta Gerwig’s 2012 film Frances Ha, but it’s not as celebrated as it should be. It can be huge and consuming. There is a viewpoint that desire comes first, and love grows out of desire. And sometimes friendship stays on the side of non-sexual love, and sometimes crosses over into the physical. In Toto Among the Murderers, I wanted to show how love can grow out of friendship and turn into desire.”

This is a novel I really enjoyed. It won’t be for everyone, but it evoked a time and place for me, and I liked the main characters.

[lucy black · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toto Among the Murderers by Sally J Morgan is not a true crime novel although it features true crime. Based on her own experiences Morgan writes about young working class women in the early 70s. As Sally did, the protagonist Toto also narrowly escapes from serial killers the Wests. But this is only a small part of this beautiful novel. It’s more about friendship, love, self preservation and self worth. I loved the way that even piled with shit dads, shit boyfriends, shit flats, shit jobs, shit prospects- these young women had clarity and perseverance and hang onto the nugget of gold that is their true brilliance. Toto is an entirely endearing main character and her friends and conversations are incredibly relatable and readable. I loved the descriptions of flats and clothes and I loved the different personalities. It’s dirty and queer and funny and pretty and inspiring. I really recommend this one. It reminds me a bit of Marge Piercy’s writing and Michelle Tea’s and the early Margaret Atwood, it’s hard to believe this is Sally J Morgan’s first novel. Tbh though, I don’t really know what straight cis men might get from reading this, but that’s all the more reason to read it I suppose.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wonderful book. I’d call this a slow burner, it’s beautifully written and so very real.
Toto is a great character, and I found myself rooting for her throughout. Parts of it feel grim and dirty. It sums up 1970s in the North brilliantly and shows the importance of instinct.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

1973, from art school to shared housing in run-down Leeds, and Jude (aka Toto) is a chaotic, wild child, living a reckless, slightly crazy life, thoroughly enjoying her youth, blissfully unconnected with the news of random attacks on woman that keep showing up on the news.

What a wild ride TOTO AMONG THE MURDERERS was - it could leave the reader with a decided longing for the good old mad, bad, crazy days of teenage-hood, when you could get away with hitchhiking, moving from share house to share house, wandering about with little idea of where you were going or what you'd end up doing. Or it could leave readers wondering how the hell previous generations survived. Especially when the casual references to Fred and Rosemary West are thrown into the mix.

Beautifully executed this coming of age story, combined with thriller aspects, was really a roller-coaster. Toto is a great character, mad, wild, restless, seemingly without a care in the world, or a foot in reality. Yet she sees things like the plight of neighbour Janice; and what her boyfriend's behaviour is doing to her best friend Nel.

It seems there's some fact behind the fiction here, involving the author and her own personal encounters with the West's, so it's not hard to believe that a fair amount of this novel is influenced by personal experience. Having said that, the West encounter is kind of less important overall than the coming of age aspects that the young women - Jude and her friend Nel in particular - experience. The story of friendship, self-preservation, love and respect for others really shines through. The way that they hang onto the things that matter in the face of a heap of obstacles - from the sorts of no-future jobs girls had to put up with then; share houses and the problems of flatmates from hell; idiot boyfriends; dysfunctional families; rang very true and made for really engaging reading.

Where TOTO AMONG THE MURDERERS really shone, actually glowed with the light of determination and gloriousness, is in the way it illuminated young women, as they really are. With all the doubts, thoughts, feelings, and desires. Reckless, clever, daft as a brush, brave and crazy. The whole thing is not just beautifully executed and car crash fascinating, it's very reaffirming in a most unexpected manner.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/revi...

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the media’s fascination with serial killers, fictional or non, is at a point where it is descending into fetishism – streaming service Netflix releases material about them twice or three times a month, there are movies about them, musicals and novels. I guess the fascination is that their atrocities are beyond what any human would do, at least that’s my theory.

Sally J. Morgan’s Toto among the Murderers features Fred and Mary West but thankfully, this is a McGuffin. I don’t think I could stand reading about someone being tortured in an attic. Instead this is a book about the complexity of relationships.

Toto is a free spirit, she hitchhikes, visits different places in England and is liberal with whom she loves. The book starts with Toto and her friends moving to a house in the north of England and trying to settle down but instead she pursues a relationship with a dominating woman who tries to possess her. In the meantime she also tries to cope with other obstacles such as the sexual advances of males.

Her friend Nel, a student studying to be a teacher, which she hates, narrates some chapters in the book and is a victim of an abusive boyfriend. both characters are at crossroads with their lives and need to choose the right path but, as always there are repercussions. Plus the fear that Fred and Mary West are lurking about does not help the situation.

Not only is this a book about relationships but it is also a portrait of Northern working class live: domestic abuse, regional accents and the ‘hard’ attitude that is documented. These were the aspects i liked the most.

However, I do have a gripe and it is a major one: the narrators are not distinct. The authors uses the same style and it begins to blur. This is a pity because a touch like this would have made the book better. Considering that there are authors who make sure each character has their own way of speaking, I found the lack of it in Toto… quite lazy.

So I guess I’m in the middle here. Great plot but needed fine tuning

[Lyndsey Dance · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a superbly written book. Each of the main characters was intriguingly complex and you, as the reader, invest in each of them. This was a beautiful but edgy journey to be taken on. Feeling sad to have come to the end of it but warm and satisfied after the read.

[Lenaasty · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm so mad at the scam this book is! I gave 2 stars because it's well written but Jesus this is poor advertisement. Toto among the murderers BUT the murderers show up page 319?????? fucking hell what a waste of time

[Averil · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made it onto the 2021 Ockham Award longlist and without that exposure I doubt I would have picked up. The author, Sally J Morgan, is British-born but lives in Wellington, NZ, hence her eligibility to be in the Ockham Awards. I'm so glad I did pick it up, however, because it's a beautiful book, delving into female friendship and love, and set against a Bohemian/art-crowd/uni backdrop in the UK in the '70s. It reminds me greatly of The Strays by Emily Bitto, set in Melbourne with a similar crowd but an earlier time period. Morgan's portrayal of the complexity of female relationships is so graceful and insightful. The characters in this book are so beautifully flawed and human and although the book in many ways doesn't have a strong traditional plot (the plot is an emotional journey more than anything), it doesn't really matter. Instead you are let into the world of this group for a period of time and then just as easily at the end you step back out.

I did enjoy her framing of the book against actual historical events - a couple committed several kidnappings and murders in the 1970s, picking up hitchhiking young women. This lended it an authentic touch and explained why the main protagonist's (the titular Toto's) friends were worried for her safety in a way that might have been unusual in the 1970s.

I also really enjoyed how Morgan broke up Toto's narrative with snippets from Nel's perspective. This worked really well in giving us a varying view of Toto in the world from outside her head.

There are no real redeeming features of any of the male characters in the book. In some ways this is a book about paternal-daughter relationships, focusing on how young women have to fight their way out from under paternal authority, and how paternal authority exists even between male and female peers under the guise of friendship. 

This isn't an earth-shatteringly significant book, but I found it very compelling. The characters are beautifully drawn and complex, real, and I found myself wanting to visit their flat in Leeds for a cup of tea. 

You can check out more book reviews by me at https://www.instagram.com/avrbookstuff.

Please shop at your local indie bookstore.

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Toto is a great character... she's wild,free,a little bit clueless and a little bit lost.
This is the 70's there's a lot of post student days of laying in bed till noon,drinking and smoking.
Living with two friends,in a rough part of the city,Toto certainly embraces life,and she is fairly reckless.
We forget the days where you couldn't just get in touch with friends at the touch of a button.. that if you didn't come home when you said you would,they'd worry,and wait until you did.
Nel seems to do this for Toto... definitely my favourite character in the book. Broken by her boyfriend,but showing so much love for her friends.
The whole Wests thing doesn't really go with the rest of the book I think... almost as if they've been placed there just for publicity... I think they would have been better a nameless threat.

A good read,full of vibrant characters,who drink and bed hop like crazy... fun times,but with a threat of violence never far way.

[Ape · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a relief to get this one finished in order to find out how it ended. There was a growing sense of foreboding throughout. It’s set in the 1970s in Yorkshire, about 3 girls in their early twenties, who went to art school together, in Sheffield if I followed it right. 2 of them are now on teacher training, the other, Toto (a nickname from her surname, Toton) is on the dole, helping out at an alternative school and basically losing herself in drugs, parties and hitchhiking. Jo, a lass from Doncaster, is married to Hank, a Sheffield steel worker (these being the days when it wasn’t quite as acceptable to live together unmarried of course) and Nel, a Scottish girl, is in a not-so-wonderful relationship with Simon, an artistic narcissist.

So mostly the story is about their conversations, parties and figuring themselves out in Yorkshire. And reading this as an old bag of 40, I do see how incredibly young and clueless they are, even though they think they’re street wise and know-it-all, moving into very cheap digs into the roughest part of Leeds (they get to live opposite a brothel), smoking away and doing drugs. But they’re so clueless and easily manipulated. Which is the first point of worry, as in the background we see newspaper clippings of girls that have disappeared, stories of missing girls that end up dead, strangled bodies found discarded. This is the time of the Yorkshire Ripper, but in Morgan’s book I don’t think he’s referenced, instead she has the Wests creeping about in the background. I hadn’t really thought about them being about in the 1970s. I wasn’t alive then, but I do remember them being caught and the scandal of what was dug up in their garden being on the news. So they went on for a horrifically long time getting away with it. I actually first found out about this book via an interview with Sally J Morgan. She mentioned that she used to hitchhike, and remembers turning down a lift from a rather creepy couple. Those moments that can change a life. Her horror when she saw them on the news years later and realised she’d turned down a lift from the Wests.

It also shows the accepted abuse of women in the 1970s. I mean, consider that rape wasn’t even a crime in the UK at that time if you were married. And we see women being spoken down to, groped and abused, and somehow, it feels as though it’s taken as their lot. The abuse Nel puts up with is awful. Then you have a borderline creepy couple, almost like the legal, non-murdering version of the Wests, who Toto gets involved with. She has an affair with the wife, Callie, who is basically doing it to get back at her unfaithful husband. She is intensely possessive and controlling of Toto, keeping her away from her friends, even hiding her boots so she has no footwear in which to leave the house, throwing out her clothes and giving her new ones as to recreate her. And there’s the sadistic sex with strangulation. How far does all this go before it’s not a preference but a crime? Given that this is the 70s, it does feel like a much greyer zone in regards to women’s rights. And then of course there’s the rough part of Leeds that they stop in, where any woman around there is assumed to be a prostitute, and seeing the signs of abuse on the prostitutes from across the road, inflicted by the pimp. Always the violence and the repression in many of the “relationships”, always women submitting. This is what I mean about the underlying creepiness that builds throughout the book and makes you tense: how is Morgan going to end the hitchhiking adventures of Toto?

[Rick Yeowart · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ripped through this book in a few days.
I was born in 1980s northern England, approximately 10 years after the time period of this book’s setting. So although I cannot relate fully to the subject matter I have grown up around northern towns and their bigger brother cities.

This book is about friendship, and the trust and comfort which can be found within long term friendships. Especially those friendships forged during a person’s university years, and the years post uni, finding a path, a career, somewhere to live, still a fledgling really trying to fly in a world now without the structure of education.
Our main character Toto (nickname) is an art grad, living in Leeds in a shared house, in a rough neck of the woods; brothel over the road and all its trappings.
She is youthful and still reckless along with it at times (folly of youth), which most of us were probably. Drinking too much, smoking too much, living hard and loving it.

She gets her biggest kicks from hitchhiking, or jaunting as she calls it. But this is at a time when girls were disappearing at an alarming rate from cities in Northern England. Thumbing a lift on the M1 one minute, discarded in a field or on some moore the next…

“My preferred game is much more dangerous. It's played with men in small cars who hide girls under leaves on the top of moors and deep in the woods."

The author paints a brilliant picture of this life, the smoke filled pubs, smack-head filled woods and prostitution filled street corners.
Along with this picture of life drawn from personal experience she brings to the surface the general danger women are subjected to, particularly from men known and unknown. Her best friend Nel (whose perspective the story is told from as well in separate chapters) suffers from psychological and physical abuse at the hands of her fiancé.

It’s terrifying at times, a particular incident drawn directly from the authors experience of nearly getting into a car whilst hitchhiking with Fred and Rose West towards the end is a nice finale to her jaunts, before the actual conclusion of the book.

I liked the main characters in this book, it’s easy to read. I think it maybe took its time getting there though.

And that cover…it’s gorgeous, but is there a dead girl under those leaves?

[Andy Weston · Rating 4 out of 5]

I eventually got round to reading the winner of the Portico Prize. My delay was in waiting for a sensibly priced used copy..

It was worth the wait. Its a character study of Jude, nicknamed Toto, during a significant year in her life, 1973, when she is living in Leeds. Leeds of the day is a far more dangerous place than Jude realises. She is on the dole, a broke art graduate determined to have fun as she moves into a shared house in a rundown and crime-ridden part of the city, travelling to student parties around the country by hitch-hiking, heavily involved in drink and drugs.

Around her the country is going through transition also, not unlike the present, with a sharp downturn in the economy, inflation at more than 10%, the immergence of political extremists, a class war in industry, and an uncertainty in the direction it was headed.

All this, and there is a serial killer, or killers, on the loose. Someone, we know now the Wests, are murdering young hitch-hiking girls. Jude is blissfully ignorant of problems of the country, and feels untouchable when picking up lifts from strangers.

Morgan's skill is in portraying so much brutality and threat with a lightness of touch in describing the lives of young women on the margins of society.

As Toto does, she herself had a close call with the couple stalking the roads in the early 1970s.

[Hayley · Rating 3 out of 5]

More than 3 stars, not quite 4.

This wasn't what I was expecting at all, in that nothing major really happens, and I was probably imagining this to be more about murder and peril. Not that its without those things - fear on the edges of everything, the many ways women are pinned to their way of life psychologically, physically, and fiscally. But it's full of hope and naivety too. I only found the encounter with the Wests worthwhile because I know that really happened to the author - otherwise, I'm not sure it added much without that context. And I wasn't sold on the ending and the relationship it builds up to at all. I think the chapters written from Nel's perspective could have been more meaningful l...or maybe less meaningful? I just didn't like how when we dropped into her chapters it was always an emotional narrative, it didn't really ever give her any agency and even her happy times are defined by her love life.

[Sian Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, it was original in setting and had lots of quirks. I liked Jude/ Toto a lot as a character, she was good fun and I enjoyed the adventures she took the reader on. I also thought Nel to be a well written character. Their friendship also felt very real and relatable to me. The writing was good. But something was lacking and I did not feel particularly deeply for any characters or sentiment towards the story. Still, overall it was an entertaining read. I suppose I would recommend it.

[Paul Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars, a great British read and I can see how it won prizes. Particularly interesting for me as I lived in the North of England and it was popular in Universities in this era to have competitions during what was known as "Rag Week" to see how far people could hitch hike in 24 hours. I know, sounds implausible in 2023! That charity hitch hike got me hooked on hitch hiking: meet fascinating people and travel for free, what was not to like? After university I hitched as far as Prague and Morocco from the UK.

So that aspect of the novel got me interested right away, although that particular theme might be alien to many readers. And then the free-spirited main character Jude was also a big hit. I loved the other characters too and there was just such a huge canvas on which it was all set out and a lot of delightful unpredictability in the plot. A feel-good, road-trip kind of a book. Gritty realism contrasted with bohemian upper middle class artists. Compelling, edgy and as another reviewer states strangely reaffirming. Highly recommended.

[Paige Tee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Misleading, very few references to true crime. Reads more as a coming of age novel.

[the great gretsby · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Lin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was so shocked that a book called Toto Among the murderers was NOT a happy jaunt.... Toto is in fact among some murderers and she has a bad time!
(but then she gets a wife and a house with wisteria so that's very nice)

[Diane Porter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in the 70’s, this book recreates so many of the wonderful, crazy features of that era - the cars, the music, the clothes, the serial killers (!)...alongside a vast array of beautifully intricate characters from all the social classes, but all with their own insecurities, inadequacies and emotional/physical scars. Toto herself appears to be the epitome of selfish irresponsibility and blind hedonism, but she is far from superficial as the author takes pains to reveal there is much more depth to her than just a need to self-destruct.
I liked the irony of ‘Toto’ being the dog’s name out of The Wizard of Oz, yet this Toto was much more like a cat...a cat with 9 lives - at least!

[Jamie Sands · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book, it's compellingly written and although the characters are largely assholes, I was rooting for Toto and Nel all the same.


It's down a star though because of the lack of plot, and the immense amount of dread and suspense just kind of don't work for me. I dunno, I felt like it needed more action maybe? something in the final act which wasn't a near miss or a random encounter with new characters who immediately disappear?

It's possible as a writer working through the shapes of stories and beats etc I'm being extra critical. it's absolutely a fun read and absorbing, couldn't put it down stuff...I just wanted... more.

[Tigga Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Sally Rooney wannabe plot, with an emphasis on the complexity of middle adult relationships - however unfortunately lacks the actual quality of Sally Rooney’s character development. Storyline is engaging enough to pass the time, but overall I wouldn’t say my life has been enriched by this book. A light read that - heads up - has very little to do with Fred and Rosemary West, and has more to do with the sexual tension of coming-of-age in the 70’s.

[Sam · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a DNF at Page 235.

Reads like a Rose West/Fred West’s biography.

I didnt care about the story as nothing was actually happening. The name toto was starting to grate on me. So, I stopped picking the book up. I'm going to donate to the charity shop in the hope someone use it as toliet paper or light a fire.

1*

[Belinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 actually.
I found it a little difficult to enjoy to begin with as Jude annoyed me because she was too reckless, but who, back in the 70's, knew a thing about serial killers? Narcissists and psychopaths are topics of conversation NOW, but they weren't then. This was post 60's wild child love, sex, peace, and Jude was enjoying the lot.

I really liked Nel, but her situation seems so awful. The unsupportive father and mother, the total dick, Simon, her own sense of anxiety about the future. I also enjoyed Jo and Hank and the people at the alternative house, etc, but the main peripheral characters are mostly either vain, self indulgent or deeply messed up. eg: Hugo, Callie and Janice. I considered how awful these people were and realised this is often quite accurate if we are people like Jude, drifting, avoiding the pain of her own upbringing, without enough self esteem to keep herself safe, using drugs and alcohol to medicate.

But Jude and Nel are moving towards a place where shucking off the constraints of childhood, societal ideals, even teen fantasies around being "cool" or "wild" or "independent" are occuring. Jude needs to be scared into it, Nel needs to stop focusing on the tiny box others have stuck her in. Relationships are assessed and filtered out (or in). Life is preparing them all for some sort of stability, but mostly maturity based on finding answers to that big question, "Who Am I?".

I've seen other reviews here that say Morgan's writing isn't good or it's over detailed. It is neither of these things. This is a good book, a well written one with decent characters, but it is also deliberately chaotic at times - I believe it's because it is meant to reflect the internal worlds of Nel and Jude.

My favourite read for 2022 and one that I'm recommending to others.

[Veronica · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title is poor and the book gets off to a clunky and aimlessly rambling start but ultimately it was better than I expected it to be. Drawing on her own experiences, Morgan evokes the seedy atmosphere of life in northern cities in the 1970s, when the Yorkshire Ripper and Fred and Rose West were on the hunt for victims. Jude/Toto is a free spirit who knowingly takes risks, but is street-smart and able to look after herself. Although it seems plotless initially, it ends up with a nice story arc and a sense of closure at the end.

Sally Morgan herself refused a lift from Fred and Rose West in 1973, not realising it until 20 years later, and this encounter features in the last pages of the novel. Some reviewers complain that the title is misleading -- because they don't murder Toto? I don't like the title but this seems a bit daft. Throughout the novel there is a sense of menace as Jude wanders into dangerous or exploitative situations, and radio and TV reports on a series of missing girls, later found murdered. Toto could easily be one of them.

Sone of the episodes are a bit forced and overwritten (Toto's relationship with Callie), and as I know Sheffield I was disappointed that she made some place names up (and in Leeds, spelt Headingley wrong throughout). Using the real geography of the city would have created a better sense of place.

Footnote: I noted from an interview that she'd been an itinerant hitch-hiking archaeologist in the 1980s, as was I, so I had to rack my brain wondering if I'd met her -- it was a small community back then. Doesn't ring a bell though.

[Zoe Radley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn what a ride this book is. Filled with all sorts of raggedy taggle characters, prostitutes, pimps and drugs also the main character who drifts from place to place always looking for a high, danger and excitement…. Until the news start to spill about people who have been hitchhiking found dead/murdered and soon it’s all anyone can talk about. The main character Toto at first ignores all this has nothing to do with her, but her life isn’t as free or as safe as she thinks and her decisions start to make her uneasy… also the life of her friends have also started to fray. This is about the harsh realities up in the north during the 70s and how the life of just partying, taking drugs and lifts everywhere can be freeing at some point it gets lonely and dangerous and is it really what Toto wants. I found this at times horrifying and yet also tragic that a young girl feels the need to escape by drifting on the edge of society and yet also attracting danger to her, yes she can fight her way out but sometimes that’s not enough. This is disturbing, harrowing and yet moving portrayal of youth, vulnerability and life in the 70s.

[Laura Mauro · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did enjoy this book for the most part. It's largely kitchen sink drama (not used derogatorily here!) with a healthy dose of subculture & queerness - Toto's chaotic existence is fun to read about, even if she is frequently infuriating (which I suppose is the point). It's well written, feels very true to the working class British experience, and the last 50 pages or so are incredibly compelling. So much so that I really wished they'd come sooner. For a book called Toto Among the Murderers, she's really only among the murderers at the very end - invoking the spectre of Myra Hindley and the Wests in a genuinely gut churning way. We see a hint of it with the paras earlier in the book, and I'd expected the rest to come sooner, but it all gets a bit waylaid with the domestic situation with Callie - which, while interesting (reminded me of Nancy and Diana in Tipping the Velvet!) went on far too long for my liking and derailed the more interesting premise of Toto getting in trouble via her stubbornness in 'jaunting' despite the clear and present dangers.

It's a good book, all said. I just wish the focus had been shifted somewhat.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having had a good previous experience with the Portico Prize with its past winner (Saltwater) earlier this year, I was excited to pick this up. Whilst it read like a thriller in that I felt propelled through the novel in anticipation of the climax where Toto (I presumed!) would meet Fred and Rosemary, the 70s serial killers of the North; I was slightly dismayed to realise at the 70% mark that actually this wasn't going to be about one of the girls being kidnapped.

Overall, this is a slow burn plot that is easy to read but ultimately disappoints in not delivering what it's marketing suggests. Fred and Rosemary are no more than a paragraph in the last 10% of the novel, although the constant references to girls going missing throughout are compelling and keep the thriller aspect of the novel alive as we sense a foreboding doom (that actually doesn't materialise in the end, explaining why a lot of reviews reveal dissatisfied readers).

2/3 points for concept
2/3 points for writing
2/3 points for enjoyment
0/1 point for feeling/moved
= 6/10 (3/5*)

[Steph · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first, I thought this was a YA read but the subject caught me at some point.

Set in the 70's, largely about Jude, aka Toto, and secondarily about her best friend, Penelope/Nel. Moving into an unsavoury suburb with their other close friend, Jo, I wonder what endears Toto to them to the point they move into this questionable area to carry her unemployed self.

Nel and Jo are fresh out of Art school, leaving their husbands behind, endeavouring for a start in their career life. Toto dropped out of the same school and thrills to live direction less, on the dole and on the edge.

Much drinking and smoking of spliffs, hitchhiking, pleasure-seeking and selfishness are Toto's personal themes. She is compassionate though.

Meanwhile, her best friend is hiding a secret from everyone who loves her. This is probably the most suspenseful part of the book.

It gives a look into alternate lives and lifestyles that also created interest for me. I'm sure there are comparisons, symbolism and allusions to mythology and tarot that bleed into the plots but did not make the effort to understand them.

[Mike Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

By the pricking of my thumbs: it’s always a dangerous time to be a girl but the 1970s in England were particularly fraught, what with Sutcliffe and the Wests plying their trade. Against this backdrop, hippie dippy student Jude Totton aka Toto’s forays into hitchhiking seem a lethal form of grand tour. But a steady relationship - whether with a volatile man or a controlling older woman - isn’t the answer: and Toto needs to escape all their clutches before she’s a hope of finding what she’s really looking for.

Sally Morgan’s descriptions of evading wouldbe attackers capture the sheer horror of a wrong spur of the moment decision, a breach of trust, the realisation that it’s all going horribly wrong, in terrifying detail. A brutal reminder that 50 Percent of the human race live with this daily, and just now we appear to be going backwards.

[Katrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in the 1970s during a gloomy time in the north of England, Toto finds herself a graduate with no job and a new house shared with friends from Art School. She likes hitch rides across the country but that might not be the wisest idea as girls are disappearing every day and Fred and Rosemary West are just around the corner...

I picked this book up on a whim whilst I was on a weekend away. I was intrigued by the blurb and particularly the fact it was mostly set in Yorkshire. It didn't disappoint. Once I'd started to read I struggled to put the book down. It is told in the first person from the points of view of 2 different characters, Jude and Nel, and follows them as they adjust to life after graduation and lay out their plans for the future. The introduction of each new character added suspense that kept me reading to find out their true motives for intruding in Toto's life.

This was a book I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend.