Novel ‘Highway Thirteen’ traces the ripple effects of one man’s violence

In the novel Highway Thirteen, we learn about an Australian serial killer in bits and pieces. He kills hitchhikers and tourists, dumping their bodies in a state forest. He drives a taxi. His name is Paul Biga. He can be charming and affable, and shockingly ruthless. He’s the son of a Polish immigrant. 

But we never actually meet him. We don’t see him killing anyone. Instead, we hear about the lives his violence has touched, and see the ripple effects of his menace and cruelty. 

“In these stories, Biga is never the protagonist,” says Fiona McFarlane, author of the 2024 book and an associate professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Minor at UC Berkeley. “He never has a chance to tell his own story.” 

In 12 short stories that span decades, McFarlane tells us about a politician who shares the killer’s name, a young man haunted by the disappearance of his sister and a police chief consumed by the pressure to stop him. She even writes a script for two bubbly true crime-obsessed podcasters, who, in between gabbing about their own lives, deliver serious facts about the killer’s crimes. 

Highway Thirteen, which was published in August, was recently nominated for The Story Prize, a prestigious annual award that honors the author of an outstanding collection of short fiction. On March 25, The Story Prize will livestream a private event that will include readings and interviews with each each finalist, followed by an announcement of the winner. 

In this UC Berkeley News Q&A, McFarlane talks about why she chose to leave the killer out of her crime novel and how stakes don’t need to be high for a reader to be captivated. 

UC Berkeley News: Can you tell me a little about yourself? Where did you grow up, when did you discover you loved to write? What genres do you most enjoy reading and writing?

Fiona McFarlane: I grew up in Sydney, Australia, and have been writing fiction for as long as I can remember. I’ve always turned to stories to make sense of the world.

I primarily read and write literary fiction, which luckily is a capacious genre that can draw from many others. My novel The Sun Walks Down engages with historical fiction, while Highway Thirteen explores elements of true crime. This flexibility means my research can take me in unexpected directions; lately, I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction about the physics of time.

Although I don’t read much true crime, I’m an avid listener of true crime podcasts. I’m particularly drawn to those where the hosts don’t claim to be experts; they’re often women discussing crime with a mix of fascination, anxiety and bewilderment. They’re angry, and they’re also funny. This got me thinking about the nature of true crime storytelling — why we do it, why we consume it and how it intersects with actual events. Highway Thirteen was my way of exploring these questions.

Highway Thirteen is centered around a fictional serial killer, Paul Biga. But instead of telling stories that feature Biga directly, it chronicles the long reverberations of his violence. Why did you choose this approach?

The title Highway Thirteen is intentionally misleading; there are only 12 stories in the collection. I wanted to create a sense that one story was missing — perhaps the story of the murderer, which readers must piece together for themselves. While writing it, I set myself a challenge: Can I write a book about a serial killer in which the killer himself never really appears? This question was a direct response to ethical concerns surrounding true crime. By sensationalizing violence, do we inadvertently glamorize perpetrators and disrespect victims?

In these stories, Biga is never the protagonist. He never has a chance to tell his own story, we never have access to what he’s thinking and feeling, and we never see him kill. I thought of him as a stone thrown into the middle of a pond — the focus isn’t on the stone itself, but on the ripples it creates. Some stories explore ripples close to the point of impact, such as a victim’s brother or a neighbor who lived across the street from the killer. Others extend much further, following the hosts of a fictional true crime podcast or the star of a dramatized limited series. They all explore how we process and attempt to make sense of unimaginable violence.

For some characters, the way Biga impacts their lives is relatively minor, but for others, it changes them in deep ways. Why did you choose to explore the wide variety of ways that a person’s life and identity can be changed by one person? How did you decide whose stories to tell?

The first story in the collection, “Tourists,” was also the first one I wrote. At the time, I wasn’t thinking about a book — I was simply intrigued by the behavior of a particular character. But as I wrote, I realized there was much more I wanted to explore about true crime storytelling, and the idea of a linked story collection took shape.

Some characters and stories felt inevitable once I made that decision. For instance, I knew right away that I’d include a story about a politician who shares the killer’s surname. Others emerged unexpectedly, like a retired flight attendant living in Australia’s tropical far north or an English nun leading a school trip to Rome that goes disastrously wrong. When I began writing each story, I didn’t always know how it would connect to Biga. Those connections revealed themselves as I wrote.

While Biga connects all the characters, each person’s own relationships and the complex feelings and interactions that come with them drive each story. 

Although I was conscious of the broader themes of the book as I wrote, each story exists as its own world, shaped by the desires and dreads of its characters. Given the weight of the book’s central themes, I wanted to make sure it was also full of pleasures. There’s a lot of love between characters, and many of the stories are intentionally funny.

I found the last chapter incredibly moving — it was raw and seemed to always hover around violence. When we learn at the end of the story how Lucy, whose life we follow from ages 6 to 19, is related to Paul Biga, it’s a huge shock. She’s full of hope that life with John will be an escape out of her stuck life, but we’re left knowing the sorrow she’s in for (when she doesn’t yet know). Why did you tell Lucy’s story? Why did you save it for last?

Lucy’s story comes last because without it, none of the others would exist. I want readers to feel that sharp certainty as they finish the book — to imagine how the lives of every other character might have unfolded if Lucy had chosen not to go with John. This isn’t about placing any blame on Lucy for Paul’s actions. Rather, I wanted to explore the way crimes like Paul’s ripple through time, affecting both the past and the future. Moments that seem insignificant at first can become monumental as their consequences unfold — sometimes decades later. By the time readers reach Lucy’s story, they understand the weight of those consequences.

By the end, I was struck by how you pulled a thread through each of the stories, revealing how we’re all connected — through specific people, directly or indirectly, but also through the emotions we all experience as humans, like insecurity, loneliness, passion, curiosity, anxiety, uncertainty, rebelliousness, love, excitement and hope. What do you hope readers take away from these stories?

I think readers will have all sorts of responses to the book. For me, fiction isn’t about delivering lessons; it’s about creating occasions for a reader to think and feel. I’m more interested in the complexity and ambiguity of the human experience than in any neat summation of it. A complexity and ambiguity that I think you describe beautifully in your list of emotions!