The Revenge of Rita Marsh by Nilesha Chauvet: a superbly plotted and intensely emotional tale – book review –

The Revenge of Rita Marsh – which has already won a prestigious London Writers Award – is a superbly plotted and intensely emotional tale with a complex woman at its heart... a woman who cares for the elderly by day and is an online vigilante by night, hunting down the faceless predators who target vulnerable young girls.

And as a former philosophy and theology student, an ordained interfaith minister, and Managing Director of the GOOD Agency, which helps charities to raise millions of pounds for good causes, Chauvet has her own deeply-held interest in helping other people.

But it’s when our intriguing protagonist, who poses a young girl to ensnare online paedophiles, finds her work coming too close to home that this heart-pounding thriller takes off into morally grey territory as the best of motives have unexpected and terrifying consequences.

‘I’ll get them in the end, I always do. I’ll hunt them down, one by one. I know who they are, I know where they live. But they will never really know me.’

Rita Marsh is a good person. By day, she is an ordinary small business owner running her late parents’ London care home, looking after the elderly and infirm. But by night, she’s a vigilante operating in a small team called Raven Justice, and posing as a young girl online.

She snares the men who try to prey on her, exposing them for what they are. She’s a force for good in a country whose justice system is crumbling and each time she follows a ‘dirty trail’ and corners a child groomer, Rita feels ‘a wave, a slow creep of satisfaction’ that she saved a child, and in so doing, ‘reclaimed a small but important part of myself.’

Rita has successfully kept her two lives separate for years, but when a former classmate returns from the past to tell her a secret which dates back to their school days, her two worlds start to collide. With both of her selves unravelling, Rita will have to choose between justice and vengeance. Will she remain a protector and force for good... or will she become someone to fear?

Chauvet proves to be a clever and masterful storyteller as this heart-pounding thriller fearlessly explores and exposes some of the darkest and most disturbing corners of paedophile crime, and asks whether those who hunt will eventually – or is that inevitably – fall prey to the transgressions for which they hold others to account.

In Rita we have a determined moral crusader, a woman whose life is ‘an elaborate juggling act’ but who won’t give up fighting for ‘the ones who cannot protect themselves’ and is more than prepared to take the law into her own hands.

Brimming with edge-of-the-seat tension, powerful emotions and psychological insight, The Revenge of Rita Marsh is one of 2024’s most impressive and thought-provoking debuts.

(Faber & Faber, hardback, £16.99)