The notion of using a podcast transcript as a structural element in a novel has been around for almost a decade. Kathleen Barber’s 2017 novel Are You Sleeping is widely considered the first book to include a podcast and it must have seemed like a cool gimmick at the time. Loads of novels have done it since. Sadie, None of This is True, and Listen for the Lie are a few of the titles I have read that use this formula.

Amy Suiter Clarke’s novel Girl, 11 follows Elle Castillo, whose podcast Justice Delayed tackles unsolved cold cases. Formerly a social worker, Elle brings a strong stomach and a desire to help victims not glorify perpetrators to her work, and she’s had some successes. But now she is trying to solve the case of The Countdown Killer (TCK).

This case has involved several murders with a distinct signature. Girls, in descending order of age, are kidnapped, held for seven days, poisoned, whipped and then deposited someplace where they are easily found. There is definitely a rigid pattern to the crimes.

According to John Douglas, the former FBI special agent who made his name interviewing and analyzing serial killers, there is a difference between the modus operandi–the way a crime is committed–and the signature. The signature is what the killer does to achieve fulfillment. The way they kill might change over time, and it won’t necessarily impact the killer’s satisfaction. But every killer has a signature, something they have to do, or the kill won’t give them the release they’re after. Based on what we know, the numbers are his signature. The three girls, three days apart; the seven days of captivity; the twenty-one lashes.

The numbers mattered more than anything else. And that tells us something.

Elle is like a dog with a bone and she has earned some street cred with the police, so when another girl goes missing after a long period of dormancy, Elle is brought in to consult. The cops don’t think this can possibly be TCK, but when Elle suffers a very personal loss, it begins to look like he’s back.

The New York Times Book Review called Girl, 11 “propulsive” and, I dunno, it wasn’t propulsive for me. It was long and relatively slow and, at times, repetitive. There are multiple perspectives in the novel and some of those perspectives felt like exposition: let me show you why this person behaves this way. Here’s the backstory. I never really love that.

But, overall, this is a well-written novel and if you haven’t had a lot of experience with books like this, you could do a lot worse.