Kinton Bay, a (fictional) town on the idyllic New South Wales coastline, like many towns in Australia and across the world, harbours a plethora of sordid and seemingly elusive secrets. These potent secrets, in addition to toxic mindsets and attitudes of folk in the town, bubble troublesomely beneath the apparently civilised society of Kinton Bay.
Audacious and murkily atmospheric teenage parties on Kinton Bay’s Wreck Beach and a cave known as the Killing Cave took place in Kinton Bay in 1998, and now history is repeating itself as similar life-defining parties take place twenty-three years later in 2021.
Such dour shenanigans and goings on occur without recompense in Kinton Bay in phenomenal Australian author, Petronella McGovern’s, latest transfixing and transporting crime novel, “The Liars”.
This pitch-perfect read hones in on the Britton family in Kinton Bay. Husband and wife, Rollo and Meri Britton, are a whale-watching business and boat owner and journalist at the local newspaper (the Chronicle) respectively. Their individualistic children (twins Siena and Taj) are fifteen and in year nine at the local high school.
Meri is highly protective of her children (reasons for which we find out in the course of the novel), and uses a location app on her phone to monitor their whereabouts at all times. Despite Meri’s eternal vigilance however, Siena manages to give her mother the slip and secretly attend an infamous party, along with other year nine girls and older boys (including Axel), at the Killing Cave.
Siena later discovers from reading Meri’s year nine diary that Meri too attended parties at the Killing Cave, and on Wreck Beach, when Meri too was fifteen. The parties that Meri attended in these eerie locales were also attended by her peers and year twelve boys. These boys were known menacingly as the Wrecking Crew and comprised Derek and Blake (the O’Riordan twins), Owen, Scott and Rollo. The boys “made a pact not to talk about” what happened at one Killing Cave party in particular.
What actually took place at all of the aforementioned gatherings is expertly and forensically delved into by Petronella, so that what initially appears cloudy and difficult to determine is eventually illuminated and broadcast well.
Siena and her Aboriginal boyfriend, Kyle, whilst exploring Wreck Point National Park one day, find a human skull, a relic that Siena is convinced is from the Aboriginal massacres that took place in Kinton Bay prior to it being established as a white settlement and town in 1847. Siena and Kyle are veritably passionate about bringing to light the atrocities committed by white men against the Aboriginals from the area, and believe that the town should be renamed (given the fact that it is named after Geoffrey Kinton, who murdered three Aboriginal families).
Upon the skull being ‘discovered’, Detective Chief Inspector Douglas Poole, from the town, launches a comprehensive investigation into the skull’s origins. Poole is well aware of the fact that back in the late 1990s, in the space of a little over a year, three well known local men went missing. These included Blake O’Riordan from year twelve, Greyson Creighton (a nurse at the local hospital) and Stefan Schwarzenbeck (a young Swiss backpacker). There is also the fact that a local businessman, Fabian Lavigne, went missing in 2020.
When the skull is identified by those on Poole’s team as being that of Stefan, rumours and innuendos circulate through the town rampantly.
Does this mean that the remains of Blake, Greyson and Fabian will also be located? Some are convinced that Blake ran away to Sydney, and that Greyson (reported to have been seen swimming near the time he went missing) may have drowned. Where lies the truth?
Can Inspector Poole’s wife, Associate Professor of Criminology, Caroline Poole, shed any light on the cases? Why has the Britton’s cherished black labrador, Pirate, suddenly gone missing? Will Kinton Bay ever come to terms with it’s violent past? Where is Axel, recently reported missing?
Petronella has woven a story of unfathomably good twists, turns and unforseen outcomes. Her intelligence, wisdom, insight and understanding shine through on every page.
Bravo Petronella! Yet again the bar has been raised in terms of writing excellence by an Australian writer. I loved this book, and shall be on the lookout for Petronella’s future books.
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