When sisters Chloe, Zoe and Dido were children, their father died and their mother could no longer care for them, so they were sent to live with the local doctor’s family: mother, father and three sons. Soon after, however, Ashwood Farm burned to the ground, and only the three young girls survived.
Years later, the sisters live very separate lives, each dealing with their painful past in different ways. But when first Chloe, and then Zoe disappears, it’s left to Dido to rake through their history and find out if her sisters are still in the world or paying the price for what happened that long ago summer night.
Do you need to know that this is inspired by a Brothers Grimm tale? Now turned into a modern British horror-murder-mystery, the original theme remains: that of an older sister protecting her younger sisters from danger, a story of how the eldest sister of three tries to save all of them from a mysterious character who is kidnapping them and threatening to kill them.
The three sisters are quite different from each other. Dido is the eldest; a doctor, always in charge and in control. Zoe is the rebel, the one that for reasons disclosed later in the book is the one who went off the rails – drink, drugs, men – but has now cleaned herself up and is studying and holding down a job. Chloe is the youngest, the most innocent, a school librarian, the one who keeps in regular contact with her sisters in order to keep them together.
And that is the key point of the story. As the author puts it at the end of the book, “though in many fairy tales it’s the youngest child, female or male, who begins as a ne’er-do-well yet somehow triumphs, for me it’s the eldest who’s most likely to apply practicality and responsibility (for herself and others) to a situation and come out on top all the while rescuing younger siblings.”
As this is a novella, there’s no time to mess about with detailed plotting. Chloe is kidnapped in the first few pages of the book, then Zoe pretty soon after. It’s then up to good old dependable Dido to find them. The police are pretty ineffective, resources stretched across too many cases, so Dido has to put herself in danger in order to find the kidnapper.
With no space to fill in extraneous details the story makes it clear who is the kidnapper, and why, pretty quickly too.
The conclusion is pretty grim yet appropriate, bringing the story to an effective end.
Fitcher’s Bird is short and sharp, a shocker that’s memorable for that reason. The ending wasn’t too difficult to guess, but this is a nice little horror story that does its job admirably. A Halloween recommendation that you can read in one sitting (I did!)
© 2026 Mark Yon
Hardback | Titan Books
FITCHERS BIRD by A G Slatter
October 2026 | 160 pages
ISBN: 978 183 5412 589
