The Murderer’s Ape Book Review

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Title: The Murderer’s Ape
Author: Jakob Weglius
Type: Fiction
Published: 2017 (English translation)
Pages: 588
TW: Racism, Abuse, Violence,
There was a lot to unpack but the way Weglius writes means you never feel like he’s trying to shove a lesson down your throat but rather subtly telling his readers how things are and how they should be. I do think given the setting (it’s set in the early twentieth century) there are some slightly awkward moments which felt a little dated and obviously for a child, they would not be able to see it in the context of the time, but overall not too jarring that they needed to be dwelled upon.
“When I meet people for the first time, almost everyone treats me as a gorilla. That’s only to be expected: after all, I am a gorilla. People usually assume that someone must have trained me to wear human clothes, in the same way bears in circuses have been trained to walk on their hind legs and parrots can be trained to swear. There are not many people who realize that I can think thoughts of my own and understand what people are saying. Not until they get to know me, that is.”
Whenever I read middle grade, I always try to remember to take the plot with a pinch of salt as sometimes they can get rather far-fetched. Now I’m not saying this novel was realistic (the very fact the protagonist is a gorilla says it all) but never did I feel that it was made for a young audience in the way some twee children’s book are. This is genuinely a book written for everyone!

Translated from Swedish, The Murderer’s Ape is a middle grade adventure novel centering on Sally: a ship engineer who happens to also be a gorilla. When her friend and fellow sea-lover the Chief is wrongly accused of murder, Sally begins an adventure to uncover the truth and free him. Travelling from Portugal to India, along the way she uncovers more secrets than she possibly could have predicted and makes friends for life as well, but if she is ever going to free her friend, she knows she must outsmart the people who would see someone like her in a cage in a zoo rather than as an engineer.