Behind You

Behind You is a novel by Catherine Hernandez, inspired by a horrifying chapter in Canadian history. Its characters and its perpetrator are fictional. Alma is a Filipina woman who works as a film editor on Infamous, a cheesy true crime series about the most notorious killers of the 20th century. On the surface she has a good life with her wife, Nira, and their teenage son, Mateo, but a great deal goes unsaid between them.

When the last episode of Infamous features the Scarborough Stalker, Alma begins to remember growing up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, while a serial rapist and killer was attacking women and girls in Scarborough. The story moves back and forth between two timelines. In the past, young Alma watches a whole city become consumed by the hunt for an elusive and terrifying suspect, while she faces danger from people much closer to her. In the present, adult Alma has to confront her own ideas about consent in order to stop her son's dangerous behaviour toward his girlfriend.

The novel is both a moving story of one girl's resilience as she grows up and a chilling portrayal of how insidious rape culture is. It turns the whodunit on its head by asking not who did it but "Who hasn't done it?", that is, who has not been complicit in sexual harm.