One Boy Missing (Stephen Orr, Text)

Detective Sergeant Bart Moy has given up on life. His young son is dead (in an accident, it is slowly revealed) and his wife has divorced him. He’s retreated to his childhood home, the rusting wheatbelt town of Guilderton, where he keeps a half-hearted eye on both Guilderton’s petty lawbreakers and the ageing curmudgeon he calls Dad. However, when someone witnesses the possible kidnapping of a young boy, Moy is forced to surface from his grief-stricken lethargy to rescue the fatherless child (and by so doing assuage the guilt he feels about his own son). I loved Stephen Orr’s 2009 novel Time’s Long Ruin, which was based on the disappearance of the Beaumont children in Adelaide in 1966; in unembellished prose Orr captured the era, and the horror, perfectly. In One Boy Missing he realises the slow rhythms of country Australia, its language and landscape, just as skilfully. This is not a thriller, but an Australian pastoral with a dark heart. If I have one criticism it would be that One Boy Missing suffers from the classic crime novel malaise of a rushed ending. That said, it is great holiday reading, whether at home or abroad.

Viki Dun is the editor of the Gleebooks Gleaner

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Category: Reviews