Gunpowder Creek by Alex Dook

There seems to be a lot of criminal action out on the roads of the Western Australian outback recently. In Emma Styles’ debut No Country for Girls, a couple of women go on a Thelma and Louise style Odyssey through the Western Australian outback. Michael Trant’s Wild Dogs was also set in this remote part of the country. Into this sub-sub-genre (Western Australian outback road thrillers?) comes Alex Dook, firing on all cylinders, in his thriller debut Gunpowder Creek.

Gunpowder Creek has a compulsive opening chapter – teenager Zach has found himself in questionable company on a “job” that he does not understand and is not prepared for. His mother Emily is interrupted at her corporate job by a desperate voicemail from Zach with gunshots in the background. Before she knows it, Emily has bargained with Zach’s shady associates to do the job that he was supposed to do and drive a mysterious package to a remote point of Western Australia while they hold Zach captive. Little does Emily know that a fairly psychotic ex-soldier has been hired to retrieve the same package. It is not long before things for Emily go from not great to bad to worse but she keeps Zach at the front of her mind as she overcomes the obstacles that are thrown at her.

Gunpowder Creek is a high octane crime thriller in a Tarantino/Coen Brothers mode – crazy situations, escalating violence, some unhinged characters and a ticking clock – but with the Australian outback roadtrip flavour that started at least as far back as Mad Max. Dook cleverly anchors all this around Emily, an ordinary, hard working mother (although with interesting parentage) who finds herself pushed into taking extreme action to save her son. He also gives a great sense of the open country that Emily is driving through – the small roadhouses, close-knit communities and crumbling buildings.

And while there are maybe a few slightly stretched coincidences, Dook cleverly ramps up the tension and keeps the story flowing so that they are easy to breeze through. Overall, Gunpowder Creek is a page turning thriller for action fans and an extremely assured debut.

Gunpowder Creek by Alex Dook

7.5

7.5/10