The Stoning by Peter Papathanasiou

 

The Stoning by Peter Papathanasiou.

Published 7th October 2021 by MacLehose Press.

From the cover of the book:

A small town in outback Australia wakes to an appalling crime.

A local schoolteacher is found taped to a tree and stoned to death. Suspicion instantly falls on the refugees at the new detention centre on Cobb's northern outskirts. Tensions are high, between whites and the local indigenous community, between immigrants and the townies.

Still mourning the recent death of his father, Detective Sergeant George Manolis returns to his childhood hometown to investigate. Within minutes of his arrival, it's clear that Cobb is not the same place he left. 

Once it thrived, but now it's a poor and derelict dusthole, with the local police chief it deserves. And as Manolis negotiates his new colleagues' antagonism, and the simmering anger of a community destroyed by alcohol and drugs, the ghosts of his past begin to flicker to life.

Vivid, pacy and almost dangerously atmospheric, The Stoning is the first in a new series of outback noir featuring DS Manolis, himself an outsider, and a good man in a world gone to hell.

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I adore an Australian outback thriller just as much as I love one that is set in a place bedecked with ice and snow. There is something about extremes of temperature that seems to bring out the very worst in people, especially in a claustrophobic small town environment, and in this delicious debut Peter Papathanasiou presents us with a cast of characters who fit the bill beautifully.  

The outback town in question is Cobb, a small community that has definitely seen better days - something that is immediately apparent to DS George Manolis when he is sent back here, his boyhood home, to investigate the brutal stoning to death of a local school teacher. The Cobb that greets him is nothing like the bustling town he remembers from the days when his father ran the popular milk bar, instead it is a place without hope, full of drunks and junkies, characterised by tension between whites and Aboriginals, and overshadowed by the unwanted refugee detention centre located on the outskirts.

Reeling from the recent death of his father and break up of his marriage, Manolis is not in a good place and the realisation that this is going to be a thankless task given the state of the run-down local police force, the hostile locals, and the general conviction that the crime is the work of one of the immigrants housed in the 'brown house', makes him want to climb back into his car and head straight back to civilisation. However, he is a man with a mission and he must see it through.

The local officer in charge Sergeant Fyfe is mostly absent, emotionally and physically, and his colleagues are not pleased about accepting the authority of a know-it-all cop from the city, but Manolis soon develops a working relationship with two promising constables who desperately need leadership - Constable Smith, known as Sparrow, the only Black cop in town, and Constable Kerr, Cobb's lone female cop.

There are sinister goings on in Cobb: crime and truculent kangaroos are rife, and there is zero respect for law and order from either the human or animal population. The town almost universally lays the blame for its ills on the refugee detention centre - although no one seems to know the truth about what goes on within its secretive walls - and the angry residents are spoiling for a lynching rather than a professionally conducted police investigation. As Manolis does his best to run the gauntlet of the town's simmering anger, and follow the sketchy trail of evidence to find a murderer, the ghosts of his own past start to haunt him by throwing up questions about his family's past. There is more than one truth to uncover in this town and Manolis is just the outsider for the job.

The Stoning is a gripping outback murder mystery that dials the noir gauge up the max. Papathanasiou writes so convincingly that you can feel yourself right there in the midst of the scorching heat and dust, surrounded by the flora and fauna of the outback. Ostensibly a slick police procedural about a new cop in town, it works in a host of complex themes around small town dynamics and the fear of those that are different, that give it real depth and emotional intelligence. 

I really enjoyed how Papathanasiou infuses this story with many layered threads around the subject of  alienation, contrasting instances where this can bind people together and cause irrevocable divisions in a small community, in society at large, and throughout history. This divides the well drawn characters into two separate types - the ones that despise outsiders of all types, and those that feel a kinship with them. For the most part it is the discrimination of the first set of characters that drive this story, building incredible tension and a very real feeling of danger as Manolis goes about trying to solve this case. The sense that barely contained violence lies just under the surface of this small community, and that it might explode at any time is tangible.

But it is not just the neatly created small town suspense that makes this such a great read, because Papathanasiou brings in an extra dimension which is rather clever, and that is the presence of a refugee detention centre in Cobb. If weird insular community affairs were not enough to cause trouble, this opens up a whole new can of worms. It becomes very easy for Cobb to lay the blame for their ills at the door of the refugees foisted upon them, particularly given the religious overtones of the killing, and some of the residents of the town are not afraid to play on this for their own ends. There are some pretty hateful views expressed in these pages, but it also explores some thought provoking issues around the subject of immigrants, both in contemporary and historical terms - particularly through the history of Manolis' own father's Greek heritage, and his grandfather's flight to safety during the break up of the Ottoman Empire.

I think my favourite thing about this book is the way it brings together an engaging little band of outsider crime fighters in Manolis, Sparrow and Kerr, and develops their relationships over the course of the story. Manolis is a good man, but he feels adrift in his own life following the loss of his father and his divorce, and he is the obvious outsider despite his roots in Cobb. Sparrow is an Aboriginal man in a white world, alienated from his own people and his colleagues by his race, choice of job and sexuality. Kerr is the lone female on the force, facing discrimination from not only her boss and colleagues, but also through the backward attitude towards women in Cobb, especially because of her choice of career. Their joint status as outsiders of one sort or another binds them to each other, and eventually makes them not only friends, but successful in their endeavours - even though plenty of sparks fly between them as we learn of the history of their trials and tribulations. Through them we get the sense that hope and decency can prevail, which was much needed after being put through the mill with such a dark and disturbing plot.

This is a gripping and thoroughly compelling read: at times funny in that sardonic noir way, while also being heart-piercingly sad, and profoundly shocking, with beautifully conceived twists and turns - and a chilling revelation at the end.  I read the whole thing in one jaw-dropping session, delighted when I turned he final page to know that this is the first part in a new series following DS Manolis. I cannot wait for the next instalment.

The Stoning is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats from your favourite book retailer.

Thank you to MacLehose Press for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review, and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Peter Papathanasiou was born in northern Greece in 1974 and adopted as a baby to an Australian family. His debut book, a memoir, was published in 2019 as Son of Mine by Salt Publishing (UK) and Little One by Allen & Unwin (Australia). His debut novel, a work of crime fiction, was published in 2021 as The Stoning by MacLehose Press (UK) and Transit Lounge (Australia), and in 2022 by Polar Verlag (Germany). Peter’s writing has otherwise been published by The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Times, The Guardian UK, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Good Weekend, ABC and SBS. He holds a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from City, University of London; a Doctor of Philosophy in Biomedical Sciences from The Australian National University (ANU); and a Bachelor of Laws from ANU specialising in criminal law.