Pomare delivers second psychological thriller
In the Clearing J.P. Pomare, Hachette, $34.99 ..
The second novel from Pomare is another psychological page-turner that explores issues of memory, power and control. Freya is a yoga teaching, kombucha drinking single mother in rural Australia — outwardly normal — “but if you were to slide a scalpel from my head down to my toes, an entirely different woman might climb out”.
Like his debut Call Me Evie, which won Best First Novel at the Ngaio Marsh awards last year, this is a difficult book to write about without giving spoilers. Pomare sets up two narratives one concerning Freya and another focusing on Amy — a young girl in a cult-like commune that kidnaps children and “realigns” them. As the novel progresses we learn more about Freya who lost a child in suspicious circumstances. When Freya reads about another child abduction and her ex appears in town, her anxiety kicks into high gear. After another child goes missing we begin to question her view of events.
Pomare delivers another compelling, tightly-wrought tale of isolation and fractured families that shares some of the chilling narrative symmetry of his debut.
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Kilo: Life and Death Inside The Secret World of the Cocaine Cartels By Toby Muse, Penguin Random House, $40 .. .. .. ..
Cocaine — somewhat glamorous if you're one of the beautiful people or a rock star. But it's also murder and corruption.
It comes from the coca plantations of Colombia, and travels around the world destroying lives from both its use and from the lucrative distribution methods and its drug lords.
Toby Muse is a war correspondent, and this is a different kind of war with an underworld fuelled by a demand for cocaine throughout western countries. Muse gets inside the cartels and the drug trade, following a kilo of cocaine from its production through the smugglers to its end user.
These are also human stories — Maria who is just a farmhand picking a crop, young Bryan who runs a barrio with a gun in his belt, Cachote who blesses the bullets before he uses them to assassinate the cartel's enemies.
This is a cold trade, one with no concern for who it hurts and kills, produced by an underclass just trying to achieve wealth.
We've seen the results in the news — towns and communities ravaged and killed by those who wield the power. Muse's story is terrifying and true. —