The Graduate by Rebecca Lim

Although Rebecca Lim is an established author, The Graduate, published in 2026, is her first crime novel. It is a fast-paced, contemporary thriller with a range of flawed characters, sprinkled with lots of references to the latest in social media, online technology and corporate management jargon and acronyms. It should be a hit especially with young working women and Gen Z audiences.

Lim forensically eviscerates racism in Australia against migrant groups, particularly those of Asian background. And she spares no sensibilities in detailing the key crimes of long-unsolved violent paedophile assaults and murders of very young teenage women.

The main protagonist is Fei Fei Chou, a young Singaporean woman who has won a scholarship to work as an apprentice in one of Australia’s largest and most prestigious legal firms based in Melbourne CBD. She is ostensibly there to build a career in mergers and amalgamations and to work towards becoming a well-remunerated partner – but actually she is obsessed with a mission of revenge against the paedophile who wrecked her life when she was 13, and believes that the firm’s vast database will help her to trace him.

Her task is complicated by the firm’s forensic surveillance of its employees and its culture of “what happens in the company, stays in the company.” There is savage competition between staff members and a willingness to use any sign of weakness, scandal or inappropriate use of company resources to destroy internal competitors. Fei Fei is intensely private and controlling, and earns very few collaborators to help her as she sifts through obscure records to try to identify the main paedophile perpetrator and his other victims.

At many stages she is close to admitting defeat, but bit by bit she starts to piece together a distressing web of deceit and corruption as she closes in on her target. But this also puts her in a situation where her life, and her career, are in severe danger.

Rebecca Lim does not pull any punches in evidencing the depth and destructiveness of overt and covert racism in corporate Melbourne, as well as the lengths to which powerful organisations and individuals will go in order to protect sexual abusers of children.

This is a chilling and suspenseful novel, where almost everyone is not who they seem, leading to a bloody but inevitable climax. While the final resolution is perhaps a little over-contrived, the book overall will leave readers longing for more crime novels from this talented author.

Reviewed by Peter Maywald
SMSA Member