Jack and Bart are best mates, whose friendship seems all but over. While Bart is recovering from a broken leg, he is also coping with his new girlfriend, his single-parent mum and her boyfriend, and his need to know more about his father who he has never met. Jack on the other hand, has lost himself to anger – lashing out at his mate, dabbling in drugs and alcohol, and crashing a car that kills another friend.

While the bond of friendship means so much to Bart that he is willing to track down his criminal father in the search for answers, we don’t actually get to see any of that friendship in the story – the book starting when the friends are already estranged – and so it’s a bit difficult to understand why Bart clings to the friendship so loyally. Otherwise though, it’s an interesting read with strong themes of mateship, fitting in, and growing up in a contemporary Australian setting. ( )

Hmmm. Herein lies a lesson for the unwary. Corris can certainly tell a story. He sets up the conflict between two mates via a nasty sports injury. Why has Jack Chandra turned so nasty on his mate Bart? Could it be that someone is poisoning his mind? Bart lives with his single mum, Emma. Bart's dad has never been around; a good -looking charmer who ran off the rails growing and selling drugs in the north coast of NSW, where the story is set. Emma is attracted to Bart's doctor, so there's a little romance thread for the older (female) reader, and a potential to explore the absent father theme, such a staple in youth literature. Jack's behaviour just gets weirder, and Bart sets out to put together the puzzle that his life has suddenly become. Oh, and there's a love interest for Bart too,in blonde-hairded Kylie.

So all the furniture is place. Why didn't the story work for we? Well, one is that Corris wants to play nice. The novel is rather too much about the social niceties of the main characters and under-performs on the crime front. You're a crime writer Corris, not Joanna Trollope! But he also lacks the confidence to write with real conviction about teenagers. The dialogue is stilted, the props (tape player? long-haul bus? Kylie? do parents still call their children Kylie?) seem curiously old-fashioned.
Give us stylised dialogue by all menas, but tie it to a thumping good crime yarn. If films like Brick and Chumscrubber can work the teen-noir angle, why can't Australia's leading crime writer? ( )