STILL by Matt Nable

 

Darwin, Australia, summer 1963. I doubt I can imagine a worse place for a) a woman of any size, shape, age or description b) an indigenous man, woman or child, or even mixed race c) an honest cop d) anyone who is of honourable and honest disposition. This thriller reeks of all that is bad in any society, and when it is mixed into suffocating and debilitating heat and humidity with no air-conditioning anywhere, it is not somewhere you want to be. 

Working amongst a viper's nest of dodgy cops is Senior Constable Ned Potter. He seems to have found himself a niche in his work, but is wearied by the culture of the police station he is working in. His discovery of a body in a piece of shallow marshland is the beginning of a long and dangerous road to solving a trail of criminal behaviour in the city and the cover ups that have taken place. Read for that - murders, bribery, rule by fear, corruption, blatant racism. The works. No one wants Ned to succeed. 

There is also a female character who becomes pivotal to the plot of the story. She is Charlotte Clark, married to one of the not so nice male characters. Only 23, she already sees that her husband Bobby is not the man she wants to spend the rest of her life with, the loss of a baby certainly not helping things. She dreams of an escape, but doesn't know how to achieve it. 

I thought this was pretty good writing. The author is an actor and has been in his fair share of movies/TV series about this underbelly of Australia, as well as in the thriller genre - his last movie role was in The Dry,  adapted from Jane Harper's terrific first novel. Still is full of characters who fit the brief so clearly of that hardened, dried out, tough Australian man or woman we see so much in movies, on TV. The setting of the Northern Territory is outstandingly depicted and drawn. I felt as frightened when the plot moved to the marshlands, the dry bush, the long straight roads, the colourless landscape, as I did when the blokes were all trying to hold their own in the local pub, the air of menace and violence never far away. 

There are crocodiles but no bushfires. There are more dead bodies, domestic violence, people learning they are bigger and better than the place they live and the people they live with. It has plenty of tension, danger, and some unexpected surprises. It's going to make a good movie. Guess who may have written himself a part.