THE BEAST OF KUKUYO

Ever since her mother’s death, 15-year-old Arundhati “Rune” Mathura has lived with her brother and grandfather in her rural Trinidad village of Kukuyo.

A dark-skinned, mixed-race (black and Asian Indian) girl, Rune is inquisitive, with a love for Murder, She Wrote. When her classmate is found murdered with no known culprit, Rune’s curious nature takes over and she decides to try and solve the case. This investigation takes her on a journey that unravels the sinister underbelly of something that has been plaguing her small village for a long time. Her best friend, Tiki, has misgivings about her snooping, but he always has her back, just as she has his. Still, Rune gets them caught up in some serious and terrifying trouble when she goes prying—and the repercussions lead to unimaginable events. Rune soon finds out that real-life detective work is not like what she sees on television, and she’s forced to face the harshness of this truth and see just how far she’s willing to go to get justice. With a strange, complicated, and diverse cast of players, this is a quick and captivating story full of observations about human life and attitudes toward life and death. It depicts the different ways people deal with trauma and how they struggle or fight to cope and keep moving forward.

A heartbreaking, realistic tale filled with just the right amount of suspense.