Since WIN however, his confidence has become unshakeable, his motivation has never been better, he knows exactly what he wants from life, in his case, a woman he hasn’t seen for twelve years, so he abandons his wife and career and heads north to outback Queensland in search of her. In a town called Perfect, not far from Eden and Paradise, lives amazing Grace.

Harley, dressed in white and sporting a red bandanna round his neck and a large gold hoop in his ear, arrives in the bar of The Merino, with a cardboard carton and a cello case, just as one of the locals is performing The Dance of the Flaming Arseholes. The locals are so aghast at the sight of Harley that they fear for the safety of their wives and children.

In this his third novel, Paul Wilson has pitted his hero against an entire town and assembled a collection of Australian myths which he then systematically explodes. There’s the great inland sea, meat pies, town bikes, mateship, flies, snakes; in fact, they’re all there, as well as car bodies up trees, scrambled eggs crook enough to make one’s lips tingle and thugs that make Crocodile Dundee look like Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken.

However, while Main Street almost bristles with activity, Harley’s inquiries about Grace meet with evasive answers.

‘I’m looking for a woman.’

‘Aren’t we all, son.’

It’s not surprising that Harley feels there’s some sort of conspiracy against him and, worse, that Grace’s husband will stop at nothing to keep her for himself. He beings to wonder if he’s about to become the victim of a Perfect set-up.

Self-awareness, self-delusion, love, lust, loyalty and fair-play, nothing is quite what it seems. Nor are the locals, from Aussie Jack, the disc jockey with his throwaway lines in Japanese, who plays cello pieces instead of country and western music, to Mr Nakamura, the entrepreneur who owns the radio station. The police sergeant is hooked on amphetamines and longs for a decent crime yet hopes there’ll be no trouble. Grace herself, frustrated and angry with her lot, nevertheless constantly polishes and perfects her role as wife and mother. There’s even a water tower that outdoes the Big Banana and an outdoor cello concert offering free pies and booze.

The narrative tends to slow down a bit in the middle, possible because of the single plot line, but somehow the leisurely style seems suited to the dry heat of outback Queensland, where the humour’s laconic and in its own good time. And if the town does show itself to be less than perfect, that’s not to say Harley isn’t eventually transformed or that Grace doesn’t become a new woman, even if neither of them find their nirvana.

A good yarn and although it’s not the great Australian novel it certainly takes a good poke at it – but then, that’s a myth anyway.