The List of Suspicious Things

by Jennie Godfrey ★★☆☆☆

In the back half of the 1970s, a serial killer dubbed the "Yorkshire Ripper" terrorized women in the north of England, claiming 13 victims before finally being captured. That real-life story inspired the plot of The List of Suspicious Things, in which Miv, a 12-year-old Yorkshire girl decides to take it upon herself to investigate and help the police catch the Ripper. She enlists the help of her best friend, Sharon, and the two of them begin to amp up their observation of their community. As they see things that they think could be clues, they begin to capture them in a notebook and refer to them as the titular list.

Assisting with the investigation is just a starting point for the topics it seems first-time author Jennie Godfrey truly wanted to explore, including racism, xenophobia, classism, and prejudice in general. Armed with the naiveté of youth, Miv and Sharon latch on to people like the local Pakistani shopkeeper, who shows nothing but kindness to the girls but whose immigrant ancestry make him someone to watch in their 12-year-old minds. Similar surface-level prejudices inform others on the List—the reclusive neighbor, the teacher who is quick to anger, the young man who (by today's standards) might be on the spectrum but to the girls just seems "off"—and it's apparent early on that their list is filled with clues to make a point rather than about truly solving the murder. It plays out like a shoddy after-school TV special where the young girls "learn a valuable lesson" about not judging a book by its cover, and that those who are different from you aren't inherently bad or suspicious.

I might have been able to set some of that aside, but the novel got progressively worse and more pandering as it went along, before taking an unnecessary and pointless turn near the end. That event, and the aftermath, took a story that was clinging by fingernails to an average rating and made it something less. I was grateful when it was finally over and I could move on to something more engrossing and thought-provoking. Needless to say, this is one I would avoid.

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Quick Facts

• Title: The List of Suspicious Things

• Author: Jennie Godfrey

• Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark

• Release Date: December 30, 2025

• Format: Ebook

• ISBN-13: 978-1464249068

• Pages: 414