- The Bluffs, by Kyle Perry. Michael Joseph. $32.99.
In geological parlance, a bluff is a rounded cliff, although more commonly used to describe an attempt to deceive.
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This breathless thriller embraces both connotations with deliberate intensity, as it ricochets between grubby reality and mythological horror.
Kyle Perry is a youth shelter and drug rehabilitation counsellor, and his debut novel spins a spookily hectic yarn about teenage cyber-crime, drug addiction, and family trauma in a haunted wilderness.
Tasmania's Great Western Tiers provide an eerily beautiful and precarious setting, mountainous and forested by ancient trees, where it is said "you could walk in circles for days and never see a path right beneath you ...
"You could fall off a cliff and never be found again. Anything could happen".
And an awful lot does happen.
Detective Con (Cornelius) Badenhorst is recovering after solving a deeply affecting crime involving young girls in Sydney.
He is the kind of suitably damaged and lonely cop for whom Perry might be interested in developing further narrative plans.
When four teenage girls are reported missing while on a school trek in Tasmania's rugged mountain country, Con is assigned to lead what appears to be a routine, and hopefully straightforward investigation.
Of course, that's one thing that isn't going to happen.
Even the location has form, with stories of mysteriously ominous sightings and previous schoolgirl casualties.
Con's allocated assistant, a feisty female detective, prone to emphasise her quick wit with playful punches to Con's ribs, adds flavour to a rapidly thickening plot.
A teacher was attacked on the trek, and one of the missing girls had been helping herself to her father's secret supply of "weed".
Small-town locals blame the father, while one of the surviving girls is crafting a cyber diary with incrementally sensational accusations.
And a couple of teachers, together with associates, are involved in tangled and probably illegal relationships, ensuring the list of likely suspects is complicated by a few red herrings.
However, the narrative is dialogue-driven, rushing by like a river in flood, with little chance of subtlety or substance.
The storyline is gripping, and the resolution commendable, but to my mind takes too long to get there.
Timing and pace are crucial elements in such a story, and less is more in most things.
As I suggest, it might well have been here.
- Ian McFarlane is a Canberra writer and reviewer.
