Masterfully twisty mystery

“Little Deaths A Novel” by Emma Flint; Hachette Books (320 pages, $26)

“Little Deaths A Novel” by Emma Flint; Hachette Books (320 pages, $26)

In Emma Flint’s “Little Deaths,” a tabloid editor insists that readers want three things: “They want to see the money. Or the lack of it. To feel envious, or superior.

“They want sex. There’s always a hot dame. Or a dame we can work up into hot. There’s always an angle we can use. And every story needs a bad guy. Every story needs fear.”

Rookie reporter Pete Wonicke wheedled his way into a story that had a “hot dame” and bad guy (or, here, gal) in a strawberry blond cocktail waitress suspected of murdering her 5-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter. It’s 1965, long before DNA evidence and security cameras on every corner, and all the cops have is Ruth Malone’s word that she put her children to bed in their Queens apartment and woke to find their room empty.

Ruth, 26, is separated from her husband, and everything about her — throaty voice, figure-flattering clothes, carefully applied makeup, teased hair, and taste for drink and the company of men — angers and appalls the police who consider her the lone suspect.

The Emma Flint crime novel charts Ruth’s life under surveillance — by cops, reporters, nosy neighbors and others — even as it tracks Pete’s obsession with the case. A veteran reporter tells him: “I know it ain’t that big a story yet. But it will be. You got two dead kids, no witnesses, and a hot broad who’s slept with half of New York. If it ever goes to trial, it’ll be … dynamite.”

What is dynamite is first-time novelist Flint’s ability to strike a match on page one and keep the flame burning for the next 300 pages. She salts the book with plenty of characters and details, such as the box and stroller under the siblings’ bedroom window and the passing mention of the nearby New York World’s Fair, which may or may not prove critical in identifying the killer.

She doesn’t stiff the readers, but Flint does make them wait, almost until the end, to reveal the who, what, when, where, why and how. It may not make you gasp, but it likely will shock or surprise you, even if you’re a seasoned mystery fan.

Flint dramatically describes the damaging disconnect between how the world sees and judges Ruth and the emotional storm raging inside.

The fledgling reporter, meanwhile, undergoes his own transformation as he weighs his ambitions, assumptions and an ethical minefield of fake or distorted news, grievous loss, and prejudiced punishments.

FICTION

“Little Deaths: A Novel”

by Emma Flint

Hachette Books, 320 pages, $26