Stillwater by Tanya Scott

With a title like Stillwater and a cold open involving a small dam, there are hints that Tanya Scott’s debut might follow the tried and tested route of Australian rural crime. In some ways this might be a deliberate bait and switch, because what Scott actually delivers in Stillwater is a gritty urban thriller with a conflicted protagonist and plenty of tension.

Luke Harris is just struggling to get by. Living in a “shoebox home… wedged into a backstreet of St Kilda” in Melbourne while he finishes his degree with a car that is close to dying and making money as a part time disability support worker. Luke’s luck changes for the better when he lands a new client, Jonathan Wylie, who pays well for Luke to care for his son Phil while their regular carer is in hospital. But that luck then shifts back to the negative when he is recognised while out at a pub as “Jack”. Because Luke Harris is a new name. Not too many years before Luke was Jack and he worked for a local Melbourne crimelord called Gus Alberici. Soon Luke is pulled unwittingly back in Gus’s orbit and tasked with tracking down his father and his father’s old friend who have both gone missing with a pile of Gus’s money.

This is just the barest outline of the issues facing Luke as complexities mount both with Gus, with Jonathan and with Jonathan’ daughter Emma, who has issues of her own to deal with. Luckily, Luke has some skills that he can bring into play as the clock ticks down and the danger comes closer. Luke has to try and navigate his way through the connections he has built become as the situation becomes more tangled and some hard truths about his childhood come to light.

Luke/Jack is a compelling central character. While he starts off as mysterious, flashback chapters chart his difficult upbringing and illuminate the reasons why he came into the orbit of someone like Alberici. They also explain how he developed his fighting skills, which come in handy from time to time. But this background also serves to highlight why he so desperately wants to leave that life behind and live a “normal life”, and why he came back to Melbourne even at the risk of coming back onto Alberici’s radar.

Stillwater is Australian crime fiction that stays firmly fixed on the underbelly. There are secrets and reveals and plenty of violence but no specific crime to solve, no procedural elements (there are some interesting police characters) and nothing particularly cosy. It is also, almost refreshingly, urban charting from the backstreets to the mansions to the pubs and boxing gyms of Melbourne. This is overall an extremely assured, page-turning thriller debut.

Stillwater by Tanya Scott

9

9.0/10