Wild Dogs by Michael Trant

 

Gabe Ahern is a dingo hunter, or ‘dogger’, living and working in the West Australian outback. It is an ugly, horrible way to make a living but as Gabe says, although he is referring mainly to his sideline in supplying grog to a dry community, somebody is going to do it so it might as well be him. Despite his hard, roughened exterior he is a fundamentally good man carrying within him the unbearable sadness of losing his beloved Valerie in terribly tragic circumstances.

Quite unwittingly, and most unwillingly, Gabe finds himself thrown into an extraordinary story involving an Afghan refugee, a highly professional gang of people smugglers, a roo shooter/hitman, bent coppers, good coppers, an unlikely hero and more.

I am not going to throw out any spoilers and take the edge off this incredibly edgy, heart stopping, twisting and turning but intricately character driven thriller. Michael Trant uses an interesting device of telling the story as it is happening to one character and then later showing what was happening at the same time to another character, which makes for a particularly satisfying way of following the story. This is done in a beautifully moving way towards the end of the book.

The opening chapters about Gabe’s methods of dingo hunting are pretty confronting, but so too are the chapters seen through the eyes of a female dingo. I love books that do this and I rate Wild Dogs as a 5 Star read.

It’s just a fabulous read from a brilliant Australian writer.

Published by Penguin Random House