Angel Rock by
Darren Williams
hbk out May 02
Published by HarperCollins
at £12.99
An unusual book, beautifully written in an almost poetic style – in fact, I
wondered if the author was at heart a poet who had strayed into writing
novels. His previous book, Swimming in Silk, won an Australian Literary
Award.
The locale is unusual, at least for European readers, in that it is neither in a
large Aussie city, nor in the barren outback, but in the hills inland from the
coast north of Sydney. Angel Rock is a small town there and sounds like
somewhere in the American mid-west a century ago. In 1969, a boy and his
younger half-brother are dropped off from a neighbour's truck and get
totally lost on the way home and wander the woods for several days. The
elder, Tom, is eventually found, but his brother has vanished.>BR>
Soon after, a teen-age girl from Angel Rock is found dead in a derelict house
in Sydney after obviously slashing her wrists. A depressed, alcoholic
detective takes up the case and insists on following the trail back to Angel
Rock, mainly for his own reasons, as his own sister committed suicide.
He finds a tangled web of relationships between the families in the small
town and drives many miles seeking out people who may have some
knowledge of the affair. The mystery of the lost boy and the dead girl
eventually converge and there is a dramatic dénouement to the case.
The main attraction of the book, which otherwise is a rather sad and
depressing story, is the ability of the author to paint such vivid word-pictures
of almost everything within sight. The weather, the trees, the rocks - even
the rain, is described with such clarity and artistry. Many of the things are
quite irrelevant to the story, but do not seem out of place. This is an
Australia that few of us have seen and although it is hardly a cosy read for a
summer deck-chair, it is powerful writing that deserves attention.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
