A strange sort of book this one. I can't say that it was a pleasant read, but it certainly was intense.

The premise is interesting (the history and characters of a real murder in Tasmania's recent past become mixed up with the erotic/paranoid fantasies of a young teacher) and the delivery begins promisingly but then falls down about third-halfway through, where the constant references to the psychology of children start to grate - they sound too much like an author wanting to pack in all of her careful research. The insights themselves are interesting, just too frequent.

I guess the positive would be Hooper's visceral storytelling which, as I said, was intense.