The Bluffs by Kyle Perry

Michael Joseph, $32.99 pb, 432 pp

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Tasmanian counsellor and youth worker Kyle Perry’s The Bluffs is set amid the liminal physical, mythical, and emotional spaces of the foothill town of Limestone Creek, and the looming, brooding, atmospheric but dangerous trails, cliffs, and forests of the Great Western Tiers. The novel, too, straddles a number of forms, functioning largely as a police procedural led by the damaged homicide detective Con Badenhorst, while using a deft multi-vocal braided narrative structure to explore the complexities and challenges of small-town Tasmanian and contemporary teen life. It does this via the characters of Murphy, a dope grower; Murphy’s daughter Jasmine; high-school teacher Eliza Ellis; YouTube celebrity mean-girl Madison; and descriptions of the four missing girls: Jasmine, Cierra, Georgia, and Bree.

The background to the story that informs so much of the contemporary plot is the disappearance of five girls in the Great Western Tiers in 1985, and the subsequent suicide of Aboriginal man Theodore Barclay at what became known as the ‘hanging tree’. Barclay had been blamed for the disappearances, only to be hounded to his death, and some still believe him guilty. However, a lingering belief that the murders were the work of a mysterious ‘Hungry Man’, a tall, thin spectre who potentially haunts the sheer uplands to this day, as described by the only surviving victim, endures in the local and popular imaginations. If Perry’s writing is most powerful when describing the highland landscape that he is clearly familiar with, it is his description of the way that the myth of the Hungry Man continues to occupy the minds of each of the characters that references the long narrative tradition associated with a Tasmanian Gothic. The uncanny is ever-present, the unknown is just beyond the boundaries of perception, and people can go missing in the thick Tasmanian bush by merely stepping away from a familiar trail.

When four high-school girls are presumed kidnapped, following the assault upon teacher Eliza Ellis while hiking in the Tiers, it is left to Detective Badenhorst to bring together the pieces of a complex puzzle. Fellow student and YouTuber Madison begins immediately to use her platform to promulgate various theories that only complicate Badenhorst’s investigations. Suspicion falls upon Murphy, the drug grower, as a local outsider, even though his daughter is one of the missing. Murphy strives to clear his name while town vigilantes stalk him. Eliza Ellis, whose niece had suicided the previous year on the Hanging Tree, begins her own exploration of the girls’ tangled relationships, and it is here that Perry’s history as a youth worker is cleverly represented. As the plot enthusiastically zips from character to character, beneath the frenetic building of motivation and framing of potential guilt emerges a strong picture of the psychic and existential pain that underlies so many of the teenage characters’ utterances and actions; the sense of invisibility and meaninglessness that Perry so capably explores. The Bluffs is a very promising début, ambitious and well-rounded, with a satisfying twist at the end that emerges organically from the more serious and sensitively rendered concerns of the novel.

Sticks and Stones by Katherine Firkin

Bantam, $32.99 pb, 392 pp

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Another début novel that skilfully uses multiple perspectives to both deepen characterisation and increase tension in a procedural narrative is journalist Katherine Firkin’s Sticks and Stones. While the spine of the novel is formed by the ongoing investigations of VicPol Missing Persons Unit detective Emmet Corban, the narrative is also woven with the threads of characters such as Emmet’s wife, Cindy; Owen, a Melbourne primary school teacher; Abbie, a young administrative assistant in a finance firm; and several other minor characters. But it’s the voice of the anonymous killer that competes most strongly with Emmet’s own. Starting with a scene just prior to the committing of a murder, the killer’s voice fleshes out his traumatic childhood, detailing his fascinations and frustrations, his warily developed friendships and emerging loyalties, set against the present narrative strand where he is a killer, although his motive is unknown.

When Emmet is faced with two missing person’s cases, both women, he is forced to prioritise. The first woman is an avid world traveller, who may or may not have failed to turn up for work due to a forthcoming trip. She isn’t a reliable communicator, but her brother is genuinely worried. The second missing person is a young mother who has failed to pick up her two children from holiday care. Suspicion falls upon her husband, who is something of a brute and, like so many of the characters, has a secret, second life. The stakes are raised for Emmet when a woman’s tortured body is discovered, followed quickly by a second. There are geo graphical and social similarities and links between the victims and the immediate suspects, though these prove to be baffling. Around the investigations of Emmet and his colleagues swirl the voices of the supplementary characters – each of the potential female victims motivated by dissatisfactions that might place them in peril, and each of the potential killers motivated by narcissism, selfishness, and an abiding misogyny that may or may not lead to murder. Sticks and Stones is a cleverly plotted novel peopled with sharply drawn characters that combine to produce a satisfying début.

The Night Swim by Megan Goldwin

Michael Joseph, $32.99 pb, 352 pp


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Megan Goldin’s second novel, The Night Swim, uses a deceptively simple structure to create both a gripping story of an alleged tragedy and its aftermath, while sensitively and intelligently exploring the effects of rape. Following the enormous success of her first podcast series, Rachel Krall has decided to investigate the brutal rape of a sixteen-year-old girl, Kelly, in the small town of Neapolis. Kelly was followed home from a party and lured to a park, where she was taken to a beach outside town and violently assaulted. The town is divided, however, following the arrest of a champion swimmer and Olympic hopeful. Some blame Kelly for ‘putting herself’ in a dangerous position, while others don’t believe her account of what took place, decrying the destruction of the young man’s reputation. Others support Kelly and look forward to the forthcoming trial that Rachel is going to cover for her podcast’s national audience.

The pressing concerns of the current case are complicated by a compelling second story that begins to emerge, and which Rachel is drawn to investigate – that of an earlier apparent drowning in Neapolis that has resonances with the contemporary story. The sister of the drowned woman, Hannah, leaves Rachel notes and letters that describe the events that led up to the drowning. It is here that the brilliance of Goldin’s plot comes to the fore. Alternating between episodes of the podcast and Rachel’s investigations in Neapolis are Hannah’s writerly letters to Rachel, which function as tender portraits of her sister but also detail shocking incidents that didn’t make sense to six-year-old Hannah at the time but are suggestive of a misogynistic culture that casts a telling light over the events of the present. This is brave, insightful storytelling, making full use of the generic tropes of crime fiction to tellingly represent the darkest aspects of masculinity enabled by cultures of entitlement and privilege.