David Whish-Wilson’s Old Scores is set amidst a Western Australia of the period that featured two jailed premiers, the Rothwells Bank scandal, Alan Bond, and more. The character of the place recalls a line from Bob Dylan’s 1986 epic ‘Brownsville Girl’: ‘Even the swap meets around here are getting pretty corrupt.’ Whish-Wilson, a lecturer in creative writing at Curtin University and a former ‘drug-trial guinea pig’, has produced a vivid (not to say excessive) account of 1980s Perth excess, the sunlight ever-glinting over a swamp of filth, depravity, murder, and deceit.

The city is indeed one of the key characters in the novel, a remote wild-west mirage with more money than sense, the sparkling golf courses and country clubs just as shady as the run-down brothels and housing commission estates. Bestriding it all is Frank Swann, a well-crafted protagonist who somehow manages to wade through the endless quagmire of shit and still come out smelling faintly of kangaroo paws.

Old Scores is reminiscent of Andrew McGahan’s Last Drinks (2000), a narrative of the same era that also interweaves fiction with fact. Whish-Wilson may lack the subtlety of McGahan, but he matches him for sheer readability.