Crime Scene: NIGEL BARTLETT King of the Road. Reviewed by Lou Murphy

Tags: Australian crime fiction/ Nigel Bartlett

A missing child, a man framed – this debut thriller has a searing ferocity.

It’s everybody’s worst nightmare – the mysterious disappearance of a child.

David Kingsgrove is a gay man in his 30s, a freelance journalist who lives in an apartment in Sydney. His 11-year-old nephew Andrew is on a regular weekend visit and sets off to see one of his playmates, Lewis, who lives nearby. He never comes back. Initially his disappearance triggers a frantic search of the neighbourhood by David and Lewis’s father, Brett. As they run around, shouting out to people to discover if they have seen Andrew, the boy’s disappearance takes on the feel of a disorientating conjuring trick.

At first David is reluctant to contact his brother, Cam, and sister-in-law, Vicky (Andrew’s parents), or the police, as this would only cement the reality of the situation. Eventually, as the minutes tick by, he has no choice. He calls his dad first, who promises to call Cam for him. He then calls the police.

Earlier that day David had discovered a multitude of sickening child porn images downloaded to his computer. He has no idea where they came from, but guesses they may have infiltrated through a virus. Not great, especially when the police come to interview David about Andrew’s disappearance and it quickly becomes apparent that he is their chief suspect. They question David about one of the pictures he has tacked on his fridge:

… of two boys in leather jackets and caps, their arms around each other’s shoulders. They can’t be older than ten or eleven, and look like cherubic Hell’s Angels.

‘That’s a Bruce Weber photo,’ I tell them.

Greenwood looks at me blankly. Fahd continues tapping it with his pen.

‘He’s famous,’ I say.

Greenwood shakes his head as if to say, ‘Haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’

‘Look, it’s not porn and it’s not pervy,’ I tell him.

‘So, what is it then?’

With the police focusing all their attention on David, he loses faith in their ability to find Andrew. When his family also turns against him he feels he has no choice but to try and track Andrew down himself. It’s an alarming proposition given the obstacles facing him: he has no experience in investigative work and he is under increasing pressure from the police (who force him to leave his apartment while they undertake a thorough search of the place).

He turns to his friend Matty for help. Matty is a personal fitness trainer and ex-cop who has experienced the pain of losing a child himself. He believes in David’s innocence and becomes his only ally, setting up a meeting for him with a lawyer and letting David stay with him while the police rifle David’s flat for evidence. David knows that when the police discover the child porn pictures on his computer it will be incredibly damaging to him. And while they’re busy putting all their manpower into investigating David, the real culprit will remain undiscovered. Matty knows a thing or two about both the police force and the trauma of a child going missing. He advises David:

‘… I know I told you to let the police do their job but mate, I was bullshitting you. I was just trying to calm you down. In my experience – my personal experience – our esteemed law enforcement agencies couldn’t find a kid in Kmart.’

I nod, taking in his words. I look in the mirror, check no-one’s come into the car park since we’ve been talking.

‘And what’s to say I can find him?’ I keep my eyes on the mirror.

‘Nothing, David. Nothing at all.’

Out of his depth, driven by the need to find his nephew and save him from real and imagined horrors, David does a runner – embarking on a chaotic, emotionally tumultuous road trip and instigating a national manhunt. A wanted man, David follows his instincts in trying to track down Andrew. Using Facebook as a way to uncover clues to his whereabouts, he exposes the vulnerability of children using technology where predators can take on multiple online disguises to forge friendships with them. David clicks on Andrew’s Facebook page:

Among his friends there’s Lewis, of course, and a bunch of other kids, smiling at the camera, poking out their tongues, one of them pulling at the sides of his mouth with his fingers. It’s like a school yearbook for the digital age. Only these aren’t eighteen-year-olds about to set out on life’s great adventure after nearly two decades of being told what to do by adults. These are eleven- and twelve-year-olds, roaming free, accessible to anyone who might venture into their virtual world.

In order to avoid detection by the police David has to change his appearance. On his lone vigilante mission he behaves in ways unimaginable to himself only days earlier, his quest to find Andrew taking him into violent, dangerous territory that challenges him at every step. Struggling with raw guilt and self-doubt, David makes for a genuine hero whose journey we follow with a sense of excruciating foreboding.

An account written with the searing ferocity of panic, King of the Road is a gripping page-turner that will keep the reader in suspense right until its final, sickening twist.

Nigel Bartlett King of the Road Vintage 2015 PB 336pp $32.99

Lou Murphy is the author of the crime novel Squealer, available from http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/LouMurphy

You can buy this book from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here or you can buy it from Booktopia here.

To see if it is available from Newtown Library, click here.