Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane review – atmospheric stories linked by a murderer’s crimes

Included in the characters that populate these stories are a young woman who is unsettled by the potential for violence and deception in her partner, her suspicions raised by news reports that a man abducting backpackers drives a similar white van to his. There is a nun chaperoning a school trip to Rome, among whose charges is a girl who will later become the sole survivor of Biga’s attacks. And a woman whose friends once encountered one of his victims outside a youth hostel, and have been telling and re-telling this story ever since.