The Wicked Girls - Thriller Novel by Alex Marwood | Mystery, Suspense & Crime Fiction for Adults | Perfect for Book Clubs & Late-Night Reading" （注：根据您提供的原始标题"The Wicked Girls"，经查询这是Alex Marwood所著的犯罪悬疑小说，因此优化方向为：1.补充作者名增加权威性 2.明确书籍类型标签 3.添加使用场景。若实际为其他商品类型请提供更多信息可重新优化）

The Wicked Girls is a wickedly good exploration of what happens to two eleven-year-olds – now grown and rehabilitated -- who were convicted of murdering an innocent toddler years ago.The two – Annabel Oldacre and Jade Walker– ceased to exist when they vanished into the system and were “reborn” under new identities. “Trained by fear, squashed by shame, ducking out of harm’s way, keeping her head down”, each woman has constructed a life for herself. That is, until a number of killings occur in Funnland, an arcade in the seaside down-and-out town of Whitmouth and one of the girls – now an investigative journalist – comes face-to-face with the other, now a manager in charge of cleaning up the Funnland mess.Wicked Girls, though, goes way beyond the mystery genre. It’s not much of a mystery, really: most astute readers will rather quickly guess the identity of “whodunit.” Rather, Wicked Girls is an indictment of the probation system (“Probation aren’t there to help you if you get into trouble. They’re there to punish you if the trouble’s your fault”), as well as the salacious British tabloids (“She feels…ashamed of her colleagues and their ability to use words to throw any light they choose on a situation. Innuendo, allusion and false connection: the staples of a media that’s still Society.”)This is a society that “doesn’t really care who it blames, as long as it blames someone.” In frequent flashbacks, we learn just what happened the horrifying day that Jade and Annabel’s actions caused the death of the young child. Carefully, skillfully, Ms. Marwood – the pseudonym for The Independent journalist – shines a laser light on the past and the present and how they come together…and more importantly, how society crafts its own story and destroys lives in the process.In Funnland, a metaphor for society with its maze of mirrors and horrors – we, the readers, get to see how class distinctions shape characters, how a true attempt at rehabilitation can make a major difference, and how secrets can be terribly destructive. Although every now and then, Ms. Marwood’s plotting goes over the top (the ending, in particular, seemed more of an action movie), the writing in general is powerful and arresting and the atmosphere of Whitmouth (where people who “can’t afford, or lack the passports or the probationary permission, to spread sangria vomit over warm Spanish concrete”) is meticulously done. Once I got started, I couldn’t stop…which, to me, is the mark of a very good book. 4.5 stars.