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Toto Among the Murderers by Sally J Morgan review – darkness and danger in the 1970s
A real-life brush with serial killers Fred and Rose West is the inspiration for a prizewinning debut novel that is both driven and stymied by its own earnestness
In recent years there has been a revived interest in the freedoms and oppressions of the 1970s (Emma Cline’s The Girls was slackly based on the Manson family cult, while Elizabeth Wetmore’s Valentine unfurled in the aftermath of male violence in 1970s Texas), and Welsh-born writer Sally J Morgan’s debut novel also wrestles with how this age of seeming progression was simultaneously a perilous time to be a woman.
Morgan’s deep dive into the decade, recently awarded the Portico prize (offered to writing “that best evokes the spirit of the north of England”), reflects on her own close call with two of the UK’s most notorious serial killers. At age 21, while hitchhiking in Yorkshire, she was offered a lift by Fred and Rosemary West. Morgan’s fondness for catching a free ride is shared by her danger-chasing protagonist Jude Totton, nicknamed Toto, for whom “the edge between life and death glitters”.
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