Seeing things

Wraiths abound in this gripping Brisbane-based thriller, while a debut gangster story throws in a rollercoaster of twists.

- MICHELE HEWITSON

THE VISITOR

by Rebecca Starford (Allen & Unwin, $36)

Laura is living in the UK when her parents inexplicably drive to a remote area in the Australian Outback and die. They have never been known to have any interest in the Outback. There are mysterious maps and photographs of the Outback - waterholes, gorges, billabongs - covering the walls of their Brisbane house which Laura and her teenage daughter Tilly have moved into in preparation for its sale. Tilly thinks, “It was like stumbling across a murder chart from one of those ITV shows her dad liked.” The pictures provoked a rare sensation in Tilly: “both narcotic and transfixing, the energy swirling around her dark at the edges, blurry.” This might be a premonition. The house is haunted, by the blurry absence of the parents and by the mysteriousness of the circumstances of their deaths.