I haven't read a good thriller in quite a while and this did not dissapoint.

Set in a quiet suburbian street in Canberra, everyone knows everyone and secrets aren't well kept, or so we thought..
This had me hooked from start to finish. I love nothing more than trying to piece together the story while sifting through what is lies and truth. The characters were very well written with some humor thrown in amongst some heavier themes.

A slow burner novel, THE GRAPEVINE is the tale of a murder from the perspective of its fallout in a small suburban community in Canberra, in 1979.

It's also a breathtakingly clever takedown of much of what remains flat out stupid - xenophobia, racism, homophobia, misogyny, and the restrictiosn place on women. Done so cleverly in fact, that it may take a while for reader's to get to grips with what's going on in THE GRAPEVINE, which leads the reader oh so gently, persuasively into a false sense of the mundane, the suburban, the predictable.

Helped in that undertaking by the weather. It's a stinking hot summer in 1979, without the benefit of the ubiquitous air-conditioners and backyard pools of the current period, this is the sort of summer that many of us remember from our childhoods. When it's so hot that moving is an effort, clothes stick to damp and sweaty bodies, car seats are an unbearable combination of heat and sticky vinyl, and people get very snarky.

In Warrah Place, the sun rises to the news of the presumed death of Antonio Marietti. He's from the "Italian House" in the street, an outsider, but the neighbourhood is transfixed with the horror and, frankly for some, excitement, of a murderer in their midst, before the adults all take up a divide and conquer model that does not play out well for any of them. Meanwhile twelve-year-old Tammy, amateur observational scientist, switches her attention from tracking ant colonies and their behaviour, to tracking the nearby human equivalent. Getting herself into a lot of hot water along the way, and very nearly dragging young Colin, their neighbour, a sad, lonely little boy, into it all with her.

For fans of traditional crime fiction, where a murder investigation forms the major focus of a story, THE GRAPEVINE will be an unusual undertaking. What this novel is doing is looking at the outward waves from a murder that shake a small community. By creating this focus on the small place, a few houses clustered together, a few mismatched families with their internal divisions and problems, it starts off slightly claustrophobic and uncomfortable viewing for the reader. Add to that the tensions within the community and the outspoken awfulness of the 70's - the overt racism, xenophobia and homophobia, and if nothing else, THE GRAPEVINE should serve as a reminder that this is NOT a way of living that anybody should be aspiring to. The interactions of a small cast here serve to reinforce just how pathetic preconceptions based on mindless bigotry are. In an elegant twist, a pointed choice has been made here in terms of us and them. The us forms from a group of outsiders, the them insiders. Frankly if I had to choose, it would be the outsiders every time - the insiders were just plain awful people - even if there were excuses posited for some.

By using the perspective of a young girl, the observational aspects of this novel are clear-eyed, and cutting. The layers of justification and explanation that adults tend to have put into place for behaving like buffoons haven't formed in this young girl, and her identification of short comings all the more crystal clear, as she searches to find descriptors for them. The resolution to the murder has a kicker of a twist sure, but even then, the fallout from that is the thing. The characters in this novel, alive and dead are vibrant, and the observations cutting, and unflinching.

Oh the nostalgia in this book! This book kind of reminds me of Desperate Housewives but in a street in suburban Australia in the late 70’s. I can almost see the curtains twitching! It begins with a fairly damning scene of a husband and wife getting cleaned up and sorted out after a murder. We find out a young man has been killed, his severed foot has been found and identified. Young Tammy, who also lives on the street, finds it all rather fascinating and decides to start looking into it. The story slowly uncovers all kinds of secrets and mysteries on the street, it unfolded at a pace that kept me hooked and unable to put it down. Loved it!