The central protagonist of Helen FitzGerald’s Halfway House is Lou O’Dowd, a chaotic and self-deprecating Australian who moves to Edinburgh on a whim to work in a halfway house for high-risk offenders. FitzGerald herself is Australian by birth but has lived in Scotland for decades, and has worked here as a probation officer, and has no doubt used some of that experience to lend authenticity to her tale.
Though I would hope for her sake that she’s not the same as Lou, who is a hilarious walking disaster of a young woman, making bad decisions and being self-destructive, but doing it with panache and a sarcastic aside into the bargain.
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The book takes its time to establish her as a flaky and funny character, introducing her and her world vividly and memorably, before throwing her into the company of a bunch of dangerous sex offenders, murderers and more.
The story escalates on one fateful night in the halfway house, which is a masterclass in blackly comic horror and crime writing, as events conspire to make Lou a hostage.
But she’s a resourceful character, and FitzGerald expertly folds the interweaving storylines together as the book comes to a climax, leaving the reader breathless and grinning from ear to ear.
