Review: Six Stories

Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Six Stories is an unusual, and very successful, hybrid - the novel takes the form of six episodes of a ‘true crime’ podcast examining the circumstances which led to the disappearance of a 15 year old boy in 1996 and the subsequent discovery of his body a year later on a remote marsh in Northumberland. Each episode of the podcast centres on an interview with someone connected with the incident, the story told from the perspective of ‘six pairs of eyes’ leaving the listener, or reader, to make up his mind what happened.

As a novel, ‘Six Stories’ reads like a transcript of the podcast episodes (there is a connecting narrative but the story essentially unwinds in the conversations in the episodes) but it is as an audiobook that the story really comes alive. I am a big fan of the whispersync technology which allows the reader to switch from reading to listening seamlessly but I dispensed with the text completely in this case, immersing myself in the fictional true crime podcast.

Wesolowski has cited Serial, a true true crime podcast, as a major inspiration and he has really captured the feel of the genre and the medium. He also uses his love of horror (he previously published horror short stories) to ramp up the oppressiveness of the setting, the dank marshes, the overbearing fell, the local folk tales, to weave a really entertaining story. I loved it and have already started (listening to) the second in the series.

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