KEY POINTS:
DREAMLAND
By Tom Gilling
Text, $37
There's a lot to be said for the slow reveal: we get to know the characters and the relationship between them. The tumbling rush, however, works in the opposite way: a confusing swirl of people, places and events.
Australian Tom Gilling opts for the latter - with fairly predictable results. The first few pages of this crime thriller are a muddle and it takes a while to pick up the pieces.
Nick Carmody is a Sydney entertainment reporter, with some dubious friends. When Danny Grogan, son and heir of corrupt developer, Harry Grogan, asks him for a favour in a brush with the law, Nick obliges - with a chain of disastrous results.
Gilling's story relies on a series of unlikely coincidences. What drives the narrative interest is not the discovery of the real events but curiosity as to whether Nick will get away with his increasingly desperate flight. It ends in a bizarre (and highly contrived) twist.
