Simon Snow: Devil's Apple

Reviewed by MICHELE HEWITSON

This first offering from local author Simon Snow is set on the West Coast, a landscape peopled with recluses and odd-bods and tough guys. Deep in the bush live the greenies, the hippies and the dope growers.

George Todman lurks on its fringes. He is a man on the run from something but what he runs towards is the booze - and a beautiful young girl who dances naked for him across the river. Her name is Rainbow. Her parents are weirdo hippies who have incurred the wrath of those in favour of logging.

Rainbow is found dead, tied to saplings, a rough pentagram sketched around her fragile body.

Todman is a suspect, but he links up with new local cop, Linda Loveridge (yes, the lads down at the station get some mileage out of that name), who is desperate to prove herself in the tough world of West Coast policing.

This is a good idea - there's enough paranoia and intrigue in any small community to create a good murder mystery - but it's a story let down in the telling.

The prose is ponderous, the unfolding old-fashioned and the interior character twists are at once frankly ludicrous and fatally predictable.

(Black Swan $26.95)